EE - Eppes Equestria
by RainbowDashFanClub
Summary: It's a usual day in the NUMB3RS universe when Allan finds a note on a chalkboard from somebody who calls themselves T.S. and finds Charlie missing. Turns out that T.S. stands for Twilight Sparkle and she needs him for a case involving the murder of Rainbow's coltfriend Cloud. Afterwards, though, the situation begins to devolve into something even a complex algorithm couldn't solve.
1. Prologue

"Charlie?! Hey Charlie!" The man's father shouted through the house. "You'd think that just because he had a break today he wouldn't up and disappear…" He dropped his newish beige jacket over the back of a chair and continued to look all around the house. He'd gotten that jacket a little while ago as a present from Mildred, or Millie as she liked to be called, he wore it most of the time these days. She'd seen it in a shop window while she was walking and promised herself to get it for him. That was months ago. She finally got around to giving it to him a week ago, though it really wasn't her fault – since he'd been taking classes at CalSci it was hard to find him at a time when he wasn't studying anymore. He'd just gotten back from classes and needed his math whiz son's help with a few things.

As if the man wasn't already doing enough with his life, he had to help his father with math. It's really not like it was difficult for him, though. He had a doctorate in mathematics and utilized this often to help his older brother with FBI cases. This was what he spent most of his time doing these days, other than his Cognitive Emergence work. These two big projects took up most of his life and as such he rarely had any free time, hence the fact that his relationships haven't gone well, if they've gone at all, for a long time. Yet his father knew this, and he still suspected he'd gone out with Amita until he looked in the garage.

Written on one of the blackboards, completely blank other than this note in the corner, there was a piece of writing that was hardly written by Charlie. This wasn't the handwriting of anybody else he knew either. It was on a purple post-it that was stuck to the upper corner of the blackboard, written in bright pink ink. They had very good cursive and were obviously proficient with a… whatever they wrote that with. It looked blatantly like something written with an old-fashioned quill and ink; however such mechanisms were hardly used anymore. Yet it looked exactly like that.

It was then that the man's father read the note itself.

"_Mister Eppes,  
>I am sorry for the short notice, but I have borrowed your son for a while to work on a case. He will be back in, at most, a week. If you would be so kind as to do me the favor of cancelling any appointments he has that may conflict with this, I would greatly appreciate it. If you would like to contact me, please wait until your son arrives home, I shall come with him to personally thank you. And do not worry; your son is not in any danger.<br>Oh, and one last thing. I'd appreciate it if you did not worry. As I said, your son is in no danger.  
>-T.S."<em>


	2. TS

The man became conscious before he actually woke up. He became aware of the fact that he was lying on his stomach and that his fingers and toes were numb. He inhaled through his nose and figured that he could smell better than he had before he woke into this state. Or at least he figured that. He didn't know for sure. He became aware of having a few more muscles that he wasn't aware of having before. For example, he could suddenly move his back in ways he wasn't previously able to. He was able to move his ears back and forth, though they seemed to have moved upward to the sides of his forehead. No matter, he could hear much better than he could previously as well, well enough to pick up a voice saying from what seemed to be a lower floor than he was on, "I think he should be awake by now."

As such, he opens his eyes. It seems to take a little longer than usual to open them, and his eyesight seems exponentially better than before. He looks out the window into the bright daylight and the glaring sunlight that was shining right onto his face. It didn't help that the walls were made of crystal. He felt incredibly tired for no particular reason. Though a man doesn't get as far as he's gotten by being lazy, as such he forced himself to lift his chin off the mattress and get into a sitting position, though he was surprisingly unstable like this. Then he looked down at his hands- well, not anymore.

He placed one of his… hooves… onto the bed in front of him and picked up the other one to examine it. His… coat was of a dark blue color, the hooves themselves were the black of his curly hair. "I appear to be a horse of some sort," he muttered to himself. He hadn't even heard the door open to another who corrected him in a kind voice, "Pony."

"Yes," he said, looking up to see a lilac-coated unicorn with cobalt blue hair with pink and purple streaks in it, "I think I'm in the body of one."  
>"That's… kind of true," the unicorn said, gesturing with a front hoof, "You've been turned into one."<br>"Why?" he asked.  
>"I need your help with a case." He wasn't informed with how horse- eh… ponies, emote, however it was reasonably obvious that she was worried, "I know you help with those often."<br>"Yeah, for Don," said the man, referencing his older brother at the FBI. Now that he thought about it, Don would probably be really worried. "Where am I?"  
>"You're in Equestria."<p>

"Where is Equestria, exactly? I've never heard of it."  
>"Here's something you might have heard of. Multiverse theory?"<br>"Oh yeah, Larry talks about it sometimes… the theory that each choice we make creates another universe in which that choice wasn't made, and that all these universes sort of run on top of each other, each invisible to the others."  
>"That's the gist of it, yes. This is another, parallel universe. In this one, we're all ponies. We tried bringing humans here on several occasions using magic, however it hardly worked. The one that worked out the best for the human was the Wright case, but I really don't think bringing Phoenix back into this would solve anything."<p>

"Magic?"  
>"Yes, magic. I can use magic." She pointed to her horn. "By the looks of it, you have a horn as well."<br>The man poked at his forehead with a front hoof. Sure enough there was a pointy thing there.  
>"How on Earth does magic work?"<br>"It's 'How in Equestria', first of all. Second, if you're asking how to perform spells, the first few should come intuitively. After that, if you want to study it, magic is a science."  
>"For something usually so arbitrary, it's odd that magic would be a science. And no thanks, I'm a mathematician, not a magician."<br>"Well, in our world, magic is hardly arbitrary. It _is_ a science and even for non-unicorns there are magic theory classes and textbooks."

He thought about pushing this subject on – learning as much as possible about magic and it's workings in this universe – but refrained. He thought he'd figure it out later, looking around he saw that the walls were covered in books. He could find something on these shelves, most likely. Given how enthused about and absorbed with magic this pony seemed, there had to be something.

Deliberately changing the subject, Charlie asked, "What's your name?"  
>"Twilight Sparkle." She sounded much less pissed off than before.<br>Charlie snickered. "That sounds like an ice cream flavor."  
>"I have never even heard of an ice cream named after me, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had one."<br>She unfurled a pair of feathered wings that matched her coat that he hadn't seen before.  
>"You have wings… and therefore they have the right to name an ice cream flavor after you?"<br>"No!" She stamped her hooves on the ground, and somehow, while surrounded by a magenta-colored glow, a crown floated over and sat itself atop her head. That whole time, her horn had been glowing that color as well.

"No need to explode," he said, "So you're a Queen or something. That makes sense. I'm not from around here, okay?"  
>"Oh. …Sorry. Keep forgetting that. And you're close, I'm a Princess."<br>"Oh, then your mom is Queen? Where's she?"  
>"Eh… no. My mother is a normal pony. There are no Queens in Equestria. Princess is the highest you get."<br>"But you know of the term."  
>"I know of the term 'Queen' because other kingdoms over our world have Kings and Queens. Most are… less than nice."<br>"Ah." He made a mental note to look this up later.

"I made you some breakfast," Twilight said, "Then we'll go to investigate."  
>"Investigate… what exactly?"<br>"A suicide… we think. At least, that's what the EBI says it is with the current evidence. We'll have to perform an autopsy and a full investigation to be sure, though."  
>"EBI?"<br>"Equestrian Bureau of Investigation."  
>"The Feds as ponies."<br>"Feds?"  
>"Short term for the FBI. That's the Federal Bureau of Investigation – the EBI from my… eh… universe."<p>

They arrived in the kitchen after walking down a long crystal hallway and Charlie saw what appeared to be a small dragon cooking. He had a fleeting thought of how odd this universe was but said nothing. The dragon was purple and green and wore a pink-and-white apron with fluff around the edges and a pink heart in the middle. Assuming the dragon was a girl would probably lead to significant issues, so Charlie simply pointed a hoof and asked, "Who's that?"  
>"That's Spike, my assistant. Spike, meet Charlie."<br>"Oh, you're that math geek Twilight was talking about! Hey there!"

…Definitely a boy. Just a boy with interesting choices in clothing.  
>"Hey," Charlie replied, "What do you have to eat here?"<br>"Oatmeal," the dragon said happily, "And I have a gemstone!"  
>"How on… uh… in Equestria do you pick up a spoon with your hooves?"<br>Twilight was already eating by moving the spoon around in that magenta glow she had, she swallowed her bite of oatmeal and said, "Oh, you levitate it. Just focus on moving it and it'll move."  
>He stared at the spoon, expecting it to do something. It just sat there. Charlie sighed. Math, sure. Magic, not so much.<p>

At one point he just thought, "You know, screw it" and just picked up the bowl. He took a bite straight out of the bowl and set it down again. Then he realized his hooves never touched the bowl.  
>"Ha!" he exclaimed, floating the bowl all around on a whim. Then, as if holding it with his other hand, he picked up the spoon in his magical grasp as well. His grin hadn't been this big since he first discovered math.<br>He ate the rest of the oatmeal while levitating both the bowl and the spoon at once. Twilight smiled and did the same for the pure novelty of it.

After breakfast they placed the bowls and spoons in the sink for Spike to wash and they walked toward the edge of Ponyville. During this walk Charlie got the hang of being a quadruped. He was informed by Twilight about his cutie mark, namely, the symbol for an infinite sum in calculus: . She told him it probably meant he had a talent with math, all of it. He asked about her cutie mark and she replied that it symbolized her talent with magic, all of it. He proceeded to joke that they were the same people, just in different fields. She corrected and told him that it was 'ponies'. He shrugged it off.


	3. Mathemagician

They arrived at the entrance to the Everfree forest and Charlie immediately walked in without an ounce of hesitation. Twilight cringed a bit but followed him.  
>"Where's the crime scene?" he asked, looking around.<br>"There's a clearing on the right side of the path soon-ish, that's it. The EBI thinks the pony hung himself, but we've yet to even get identification on him."  
>"Unicorn?"<br>"Pegasus."  
>"You have flying horses?"<br>"Flying ponies. But yes."

They arrived at the crime scene and saw a pony with a green coat and a pale yellow mane, his wings drooped down to the sides. He had on a blue and yellow skin-tight shirt that came up to and covered his cheeks. His cutie mark seemed to be three red lines of three different lengths.  
>"Odd cutie mark," Charlie noted in his thoughts, continuing to look around. There was a coil of thick, white rope – the same kind of rope that was used to hang the pony from the tree. There were a few large scrapes across the ground and a few vaguely ovular shapes pressed into the ground below those scrapes. Near the bushes at the edge of the clearing, away from the pathway, there was a short piece of rebar. His eyes quickly darted between the scrapes across the ovular depressions in the dirt and the rebar. A series of equations ran through his head.<p>

"Twilight!" he exclaimed, rushing over. He nearly lost his balance – he wasn't used to running yet – but he hardly cared.  
>"Ugh… could you stop thinking so loudly?! I can't comprehend a single word of it and I can't concentrate!"<br>"But Twilight, I think I've got it!"  
>"Take over," Twilight said to a few ponies in white vests with blue letters spelling out "EBI" on the fronts. They nodded and said, "Yes, Princess." Twilight followed Charlie over to where he'd been standing previously – at the edge of the pathway.<p>

"Okay, what is it? He's a pegasus – that's hardly my area of expertise. I was checking the rope over there – it was handled in somepony's mouth, that's how non-unicorns carry things most of the time. If we could only find something else we know he touched, we might be able to find out the pony who handled the rope, therefore the pony that killed him. But as I said, that's hardly my area of expertise."  
>"Doesn't need to be. See those scrapes across the ground? They're fairly deep – too deep for someone to have done it with a wing-tip or… a horn or a… a hoof. But see that piece of rebar over there? I'd have to do some calculations and measure the rebar as it relates to the depth of those gashes and I might be able to see if that rebar is the thing that made those gashes."<br>"But what does that piece of rebar making those gashes have to do with…"  
>"See these ovular markings that were obviously made BEFORE the gashes? They're most likely hoof prints. The pony who made those gashes was probably trying to cover their hoof prints, probably with that rebar over there. As such, if we can identify if those gashes were made by that rebar…"<br>"We'll be able to see if the last pony who handled that rebar was the same pony who handled the rope!"  
>"Exactly."<p>

~Meanwhile…

"Eppes." Charlie's brother Don answered his phone. He only listened for a few seconds before nodding and closing it.  
>"What is it, Don?" his father asked.<br>"We have a suicide… they guess. Guy hung himself in a forest. He's a champion runner in-training; we can tell that by his costume… we're still trying to identify him. We've got the Feds on the scene already. I'll be there as well, let's see what I can do. Hey… where's Charlie? He might be helpful in this."  
>"Charlie's gone. Somebody called T.S. took him for a week."<br>"What?! What for?!"  
>"Don, they said not to worry. Whoever it is has things under control." He showed Don the note.<br>"…I still don't trust this T.S."  
>"I'd be heavily surprised if you trusted anybody you hadn't met."<br>"I'll go investigate this, but if I don't get word from Charlie…"  
>"You'll send out the full SWAT team."<br>"Exactly."

Don arrived at the forest and climbed out of his car. He saw the signature yellow tape, from a tree hung the body of a blonde, slender man with a track suit on.  
>"This is Clyde Dachel. He's an up-and-coming track runner; he's been sprinting since age 4. We're still working on a profile for him," another agent by the name of David informed him.<br>There were a set of footprint-like markings on the ground, but they were covered by a set of gashes. It looks suspicious, and something told Don that this must be crucial evidence, but Charlie would've been so much better at this. There wasn't really anything that jumped out at him other than that. The gashes were odd for being made by a branch, which was probably what it was. However, if whoever's tracks these were had any sense, he'd have long since thrown the branch away or into a river or something, so they didn't actually have any evidence.

And so he was about to call up the person who was closest to Charlie and might have known how to solve it when he actually received a call. The number wasn't known, so he asked,  
>"Hello?"<br>"You're Charlie's brother, correct?"  
>"Uh… yeah."<br>"You may have read my note. I'm T.S. It stands for Twilight Sparkle, that's my name. I've taken your brother to Equestria."  
>"You're T.S."<br>"Mm-hmm."  
>"And where is Equestria, exactly?"<br>"Parallel universe. I called because I need to pull somepony- er, somebody else into my world. I'd like your permission and her location."  
>"You won't have my permission until I hear from Charlie."<br>Then Charlie's voice came onto the phone. It was oddly staticy but Don could hear his brother confirm all his questions as to if he came to 'Equestria' voluntarily and to that T.S. was treating him just fine, as well as a few remarks that he could handle things himself. When Twilight came back on, she asked,  
>"Do I have your permission now?"<br>"Who is it you want?"  
>"I believe her name is Amita."<p>

~Fifteen minutes later, at Amita's…

The phone rang. She picked it up.  
>"Hello?" she asked.<br>"Hey, Amita? You know where Charlie is?" Don's voice came over the phone.  
>"No… I haven't seen him since yesterday. Why?"<br>"Somebody called Twilight Sparkle pulled him into a… parallel… universe I think… and now she's asking to bring you there as well."  
>"Who's Twilight Sparkle? It's certainly an unusual name."<br>"She didn't say. She's from Equestria, she told me."  
>"Who or what is Equestria?"<br>"Equestria is that parallel universe. She's investigating a case there, from what she told me it's on the suspicious suicide of a per- uh, pony called Cloud Dasher. They're all ponies over there. Seems incredibly similar to a case I just got. It's a suspicious suicide of a person named Clyde Dachel."

"Names are similar, what else?"  
>"Well, on each scene there's a set of prints leading toward the body that are covered in scratches. Charlie thinks he figured out what made the scratches in that world, but could it be a coincidence that they're so similar?"<br>"Not very likely… And actually, as much as going into another universe might be odd, it might help me understand your case. I'll just ask Twilight Sparkle to bring me right back so I can note the similarities on your case personally."  
>"Sounds good, Amita. I'll try to redial Twilight Sparkle and tell her about it."<br>"Okay, thanks Don."

~Meanwhile…

"Who were you talking to?" asked Charlie.  
>"I wasn't talking. I was thinking," Twilight replied.<br>"Well you were thinking pretty loudly… hey, is that magic?"  
>"Yes! You're getting the hang of it – Great!"<br>"Who were you thinking to?"  
>"Your brother."<br>"Why?"  
>"He told me that Amita agreed to come help with this."<br>"She is? She has? She's coming? When?"  
>"…Now."<p>

As if on command a pony figure appeared out of thin air in a cloud of magenta-colored smoke and coughed a little as the smoke dissipated.  
>"…Charlie?"<br>"Amita?"  
>"Yeah. Am I… a horse?"<br>"Pony," corrected Twilight and Charlie at once.  
>Amita looked over her hooves and her light blue coat and dark violet hair.<br>"Is my hair supposed to be purple?"  
>"I suppose," Twilight said, "I'm not in charge of your physical appearance in the terms of dual-universe translation processes."<br>"Is anypony?"  
>"No, Charlie, I don't think so."<p>

Amita tried to take a few steps and nearly fell over.  
>"I know, it takes getting used to," Charlie said.<br>"Last I checked, your hair wasn't black."  
>"You're right. As Twilight put it, it's the fault of the dual-universe translation processes."<br>"All ponies are this… colorful?"  
>"Yes, Amita, all ponies are this colorful. I need you to help out here, though."<br>"Wait a moment. You're Twilight Sparkle?"  
>"Yes."<br>"Well, Twilight Sparkle, there's something that may concern you. That…" she pointed to the body, "Is Cloud Dasher? We have a similar case involving one Clyde Dachel. He's a runner, up and coming."

"Cloud is pretty obviously a Wonderbolts Academy trainee. Or at the very least, _was_. We're trying to contact a next of kin," Twilight said, pointing to the costume.  
>"I'm assuming the Wonderbolts Academy is some sort of athletic thing," Charlie said. Twilight nodded.<br>"It's an elite flying academy, dedicated to weed out who can and will become Wonderbolts," Twilight explained, "You have to be in good standing with the Wonderbolts team themselves to get in to the Academy, then you have to work your tail off to get to the top. After the week spent in the Academy, a leader is chosen. Said leader must take a written test on Wonderbolts history as the next step to becoming accepted into the Wonderbolts themselves."

"So the Wonderbolts are really good," Charlie said, "And pegasus ponies have to work hard to get there."  
>"Precisely."<br>"So, Twilight… what did you need me for?"  
>"I needed you because you might be able to tell us the probability that those scratches there came from that rebar over there. Also, tell me whatever else you find out."<br>"I can try," Amita said, carefully walking over to where the scratches were and proceeding to look at the rebar.  
>Charlie levitated the rebar in front of his face and said, "Hmm… Amita, can you tell me what these are?"<br>He pointed to but didn't touch a few small dents in the surface of the rebar. He levitated it in front of her face so she could look at it closer.

"Those seem to be… bite marks! But who on Earth would bite rebar?"  
>"Somepony who can't hold it up with magic," Charlie replied, keeping the rebar in his magical grasp as he galloped back over to Twilight.<br>"There are bite marks at the top of this rebar."  
>"Amita figured that out?"<br>"Yeah."  
>"That means we can rule out a unicorn as the possible suspect, since any unicorn would prefer not to leave any evidence if possible. That leaves earth ponies and pegasi."<p>

"Actually, it only leaves pegasi," Amita replied, having just as carefully walked back over.  
>"How?" Twilight asked.<br>"From what I gather, pegasi can fly. To hang this pony, you'd need to be able to either fly or hoist the rope up by some other means. See how high up it is?"  
>"Magic," Twilight said.<br>"But since he grabbed the rebar in his mouth, he's obviously not a unicorn," Charlie pointed out, "So what Amita's saying is that the pony who hung Cloud is obviously a pegasus."  
>"Makes sense," Twilight replied. Everypony else nodded.<p> 


	4. Similarities and Inequalities

The next morning, Charlie woke up and walked out onto the porch. Twilight was watching a sky blue pegasus with rainbow-colored hair perform various tricks.  
>"Who's that?"<br>"Rainbow Dash. I hope she's okay…"  
>"Have you identified the next of kin for Cloud Dasher?"<br>"Yeah." She pointed at Rainbow.  
>"She's his next of kin? What relation?"<br>"She's his girlfriend. She's taking it pretty hard, though she won't show it." She sighed. "I just hope she's all right."

Rainbow flew over quickly afterward and landed on the railing.  
>"Who's this guy?"<br>"This is Charlie Eppes, he's a mathematician and he's helping me solve the case of your boyfriend's murder."  
>"At what point did somepony say it was a murder?" Rainbow asked as she landed on the balcony itself.<br>"Late yesterday when one of ours found bite marks on a piece of rebar near the crime scene – Charlie did the math shortly afterward and it has an 85% match with the gashes in the ground."  
>"Even I know 85% is pretty good, and I'm not an egghead like you two. Speaking of which, where's your girlfriend, mister egghead?"<br>Twilight answered for him, "Working on something to detect the size and shape of the hoofprints so we can figure out the gender of the attacker."

"Eh, sounds okay. Just tell me when you figure out who murdered him so I can RIP THEM TO PIECES!"  
>"Calm down, Rainbow Dash. I know you're angry, but it won't help to lash out like this. Trust me, Princess Celestia and the Royal Court will do a very good job at ripping them to pieces. For now, could you answer a few questions for me?"<br>"…mm-hmm."  
>As Rainbow walked inside, Twilight said, "Charlie! I'm impressed!"<br>"I did some reading. I can read, you know."

They sat down on the floor – no need for seats when you're a pony – and Charlie asked,  
>"How long were you together?"<br>"Oh, not long… A few months, maybe? He… said we could… be Wonderbolts together…" She wiped her eyes.  
>"Did he have any enemies?"<br>"No… he had a few ponies who didn't like him all that much, but nopony… really wanted… to kill him…"  
>"Could you name a few of these ponies who 'didn't like him'?"<br>"Well, he managed to make an enemy of the same pony who I made an enemy of while I was at the Academy: Lightning Dust."

"She got pulled from the Academy though…" Twilight said, "We were there to see it."  
>"No, she just got her role of Lead Pony taken away. She's very much still in the Academy- just in the Academy version of Limbo. It's called the Discord Company – where they've kept their misfits and troublemakers for centuries. It has a completely separate ranking system… though it does actually have one."<br>"This Lightning Dust… You met in the Academy?" asked Charlie.  
>Rainbow nodded. "We were friends at first. Not a surprise, we were the best there. Then she started bragging and stuff… I mean, more than I normally do and way beyond the range of cool or acceptable… she got reckless. I didn't want to tell her though… I thought she'd just fix it with time and I didn't want to hurt her feelings…"<br>"But things got out of control?"  
>"Mm-hmm. I ended up turning her in to Captain Spitfire, she ended up in the Discord Company and I haven't seen her since. I ended up becoming team leader… I took the history test a little while ago with help from Twi."<br>"And you've never even heard of Lightning Dust since then."  
>"Mm-mm." She shook her head and looked down.<p>

"Okay, Rainbow Dash. I understand you're upset. And that's fine. Thank you, we're done."  
>"Thanks. I hope you guys find whoever killed him."<br>She smiled weakly and took off through the window, she perched on the windowsill and said right before taking off,  
>"You know, you're alright, Charlie." She smiled, brighter this time. "See ya later."<br>After Rainbow left, Charlie said to Twilight, "The spirit of Loyalty must be a good friend to have."  
>"Oh, she is. …I assume you read about us?"<br>"…Close. I read on the Elements – the second edition of 'The Element of Harmony: a Reference Guide' includes more detailed information, it just came out. I read that."

Amita walked into the room.  
>"I've finished the analysis – It's a stallion."<br>"One more lead that we didn't have before. Thanks, Amita!" Charlie said happily.  
>"Here's an issue, though."<br>"What is it?"  
>"Pegasi are notoriously light. Even stallions are lightweight. This was a well-built earth stallion. Charlie, I think we have two separate ponies- two separate killers- to look for."<p>

"Actually, it makes significant sense. If it was a pegasus, to leave as little evidence as possible he'd prefer to fly in instead of walk. He wouldn't need to cover his tracks if they didn't exist," Charlie noted.  
>Twilight agreed, as did Amita.<br>"How's getting Spitfire on the phone going?" Amita asked Twilight.  
>"Slow. She may be pretty much anywhere in…"<br>"Twilight! Come quick! I got a letter from Spitfire!" exclaimed Spike, running up the stairs with a scroll in his claws.

"It says: 'Twilight Sparkle,  
>I understand the significance of this case. I will be there as fast as I can. As you've requested, I'll bring a few trusted guards. I have as much information on the case you requested as I could muster with such short notice on hoof. I'm in flight as my scribe writes this.<br>Thanks,  
>Spitfire."<p>

~A few minutes later…

The doorbell rang. Twilight flew down and opened it, the rest following behind her. Spitfire walked in, wearing shades and her captain's uniform. She probably hadn't had a chance to change before getting Twilight's letter which told her (possibly with unintended side effects) that lives depended upon her arrival ASAP. Though this was probably true, it may have set off an unintended panic and rush.

Spitfire had two guards who walked in shortly after her and shut the door behind her. Both were pegasus stallions, very tough-looking and most likely fast fliers as well, they both had black manes, one had a dark gray coat and the other had a white one. They wore traditional protective guards' gear – a magic-proof vest, protective magic-resistant helmets with Plexiglas magic-resistant visors that were slightly tinted to block out excess light, wing guards and black shoes with rubber soles that had the Wonderbolts emblem on the fronts.

The white guard was holding a large bag in his teeth. Spitfire grabbed the bag from him and held it in her hoof as she pulled a file folder out of it in her mouth and said through her teeth to Twilight,  
>"This is the file on Lightning Dust. It has all the information that is commonly known on her."<br>Twilight levitated the file over and showed it to Charlie, who had just come down the stairs with Amita. He read one of the lines aloud:  
>"Wingpower: 16. Mm… that's almost as much as Rainbow Dash. Hers is…"<br>"16.5," Spitfire interjected.  
>"Exactly."<p>

"Current placement: Discord Company," Charlie continued, "Current rank… She's a lead pony… her wing pony is… wait a moment."  
>He levitated it over to Twilight, who read the line aloud.<br>"Wing pony: Cloud Dasher."


	5. SAFE and Sound

"She murdered her wing pony?" asked Twilight.  
>"It appears so," Spitfire noted, "Though I don't know… wait a minute."<br>She gestured with a hoof and the gray guard pulled a folded paper out of his chest pocket. She unfolded it and nodded before saying,  
>"Cloud Dasher was… never in the Discord Company. It seems we mussed our records somehow."<br>"Or somepony changed them," Charlie added.

"Why would somepony want to change the records?" Amita asked.  
>"I'm honestly not sure," Spitfire replied, "Our records are kept top-secret. They're held in a safe in my office and only I know the password."<br>"It's voice activated?" Charlie asked.  
>"All hyper-secure safes in Equestria are magically imbued to be dual-activated," Twilight explained, "They require a spoken password. It checks the voice against its records and identifies if the password is correct at the same time. If either doesn't match up with the code in the magical database, it won't allow access."<p>

"Magical database?" Amita asked.  
>"Yes. Actually, you might be incredibly useful in this particular circumstance. Look at your cutie mark."<br>"My what?"  
>"This," Charlie replied, pointing at the mark on her flank.<br>"Hey!" She swatted at his hoof. "Oh wait, there's something there."  
>"My point. It represents your special talent," Charlie explained, "See mine? 'T means I'm good at math."<br>"As if you needed a butt tattoo to tell us that."  
>He rolled his eyes. "Some are more obvious than others. Anyway, yours is a string of binary code. I'll assume it means you're good at programming."<br>"And in this universe…"  
>"Magical databases."<p>

"So if we're done discussing each others' cutie marks…" Spitfire rolled her eyes.  
>"I suggest Amita go with you and she can see what she finds there," Twilight suggested.<br>Spitfire saluted her. "I'll have a chariot ready by o-two-hundred, Princess." She gestured to her guards, who promptly flew off to get one. Charlie and Twilight watched them leave, Amita walked back inside.

After they were out of sight, Charlie looked over and asked Twilight,  
>"Do pegasi fly with magic?"<br>"Uh… I'm not sure. I'm not a pegasologist."  
>"Pegasologist?"<br>"Pegasus expert. But I'm sure I have some pegasology books somewhere here."

They walked back into the castle and down the hall into the humungous library. Three floors of bluish crystal shelves held loads of books of all sorts.  
>"Has to be somewhere," Twilight said, flying around and levitating things in front of her face in circles at the same time. Charlie had to resort to using a sliding ladder, which was much harder to use given that he was an equine.<br>"Found it!" exclaimed Twilight suddenly. Startled, Charlie nearly fell off the ladder. After he regained his balance he carefully climbed down the ladder and galloped over to Twilight, he was getting the hang of running like this.

"Let's see it then."  
>"Okay. Let's see… ah, here we go. 'Chapter 1: Pegasus Magic'." She cleared her throat then began reading. "A common question among most ponies is thus: Do ponies other than unicorns have magic? The answer is yes. Though neither can commonly cast actual spells, they do use magic. Earth ponies use their magic for their way-above-normal strength. Pegasi use their magic for their flight. A pegasus with faulty flight magic cannot fly as their wings cannot hold them, though with long, hard training they may be able to hover for a short while. However, there have been several examples of such pegasi and none can sustain flight for more than 20 seconds."<p>

"So pegasi have something called flight magic, and it lets them fly."  
>"Among other things."<br>"Other things?"  
>"Pegasi can walk on clouds and manipulate weather inherently, unicorns must learn a very complex spell to manipulate weather and the spell is so complex that most unicorns have difficulty controlling it. As such, weather is left to the pegasi, hence several pegasus-specific entirely cloud comprised cities where weather is created and stored, namely, Las Pegasus and Cloudsdale."<br>"So pegasus flight magic also allows them to walk on clouds. Do clouds have magic properties?"  
>"I believe so. I'll read some more."<p>

"Wait a moment, Twilight Sparkle… why do pegasi flap their wings if they can use flight magic?"  
>"Well… um… I don't know. Let me find out." She flipped to another page. "Here we go! <em>A few ponies have asked me on several occasions if pegasi really need to flap their wings if flight is handled by magic. The answer is more complicated than usual, actually. Pegasus wing bones are made of alicorn, the same material that makes up unicorn horns. While some believe that the act of beating the wings activates the flight magic, recent studies performed by my colleagues and I revealed that no, the wing beating is simply an evolutionary habit that evolved before pegasus wings had alicorn in them and when the wings were much larger. This change is postulated to have started when interracial marriage became legal. After that, the beating of the wings became an unnecessary attribute.<em>"

"So the wings aren't necessary after all."  
>"I suppose so! Well, that's something new. I suppose that if more pegasi read this, they could fly without using their wings. Imagine how much easier everything would be!"<br>"Easier…" His eyes went wide and something visibly clicked, for a brief second his purple eyes glowed. He immediately galloped out of the library, down the hallway and into the room Twilight had allocated for her chalkboards for magic work that he'd taken over for this case. He had to find that rebar.

He burst through the door and saw Amita there, practicing levitation.  
>"Oh, hi Charlie."<br>"Working on magic I see?"  
>"I'm trying to get the hang of this while we wait for the chariot to get back."<br>"Any idea where that rebar is?"  
>"Why do you need it?"<br>"Remember those bite marks we found on that rebar?"  
>She nodded.<br>"Somebody would have to damage their teeth quite a lot if they could make bite marks in a tough metal like rebar."

"So we're looking for an earth pony stallion _with significantly damaged teeth?_ That narrows our criteria, thanks Charlie!"  
>"There's actually more. Nobody just bites rebar that much for no reason."<br>"That's right! So he had to have been stressed out enough to bite hard enough to make dents in rebar!"  
>"Yep."<p>

In a half an hour, at 2:00 p.m., the two stallions arrived back pulling a dark blue painted chariot with the Wonderbolts logo on each side as if the chariot had cutie marks. Amita climbed into the chariot, as did Spitfire right after she saluted Twilight, who nodded. The chariot took off, pulled by the two stallions.

The chariot landed and Spitfire hopped out, followed by Amita. They walked toward the main building when they walked around the side and Spitfire opened a trapdoor, leading the unicorn down the stairs to a basement filled with flight gear.  
>"What's all this stuff for?"<br>"This is where we store our flight apparatus. Those are the spare suits" she pointed to a box full of costumes in all sizes that were identical in design to the one she saw on Cloud's body in the pictures she was shown, "and those are lightning-proof suits for when we're doing possibly dangerous weather training with the newbies" she pointed to a series of white suits with black trim that Amita had never seen before but she'd heard the term 'lightning-proof suit', "and those are the safes in which we keep all our files."

She pointed to a wall completely covered in safes, suddenly and without her even knowing about it Amita's horn began to glow the same dark blue as her eyes as several slightly transparent dark blue-tinted tabs appeared in front of her vision with lines of code on them. She scanned the safes: each one had a complex lock system. That is, until she got to another. Her eyes went wide in horror as she read the words typed in a comment as the only code there: "_**Hello, Amita. If you've gotten this far that means you've done well. But not quite well enough. I will be back to take the remainder of what's mine.**_"

"Amita? Are you okay?" The voice sounded distant, though it got closer with every word. "Amita? Hello?"  
>"…Yes. I need to talk to Charlie."<br>"But that's an hour away by chariot." Spitfire had obviously heard the urgency in Amita's voice.  
>"Fifteen seconds by teleportation." Her horn began to glow, her legs bent as her hooves dug sharply into the dirt floor below. She squinted, weaving the magical fabric of the intricate and complicated spell as she pulled more and more arcane energy into herself. She carefully visualized where she needed to go, her eyes closed tightly in concentration. She'd only performed the spell once before, and it had only been as short a distance as across the mid-sized blackboard room. But she wasn't sure when this pony (or ponies) would strike back and she had to hurry.<p> 


	6. Magical Database

Charlie was standing at one of the blackboards, writing down notes on what they had so far and what still needed to be found out, thinking over what could have happened. Suddenly there was a bright flash of dark bluish light from one corner of the room as a silhouette of a unicorn mare appeared, the light dissipated and a very dazed-looking Amita stood there. Before Charlie could ask what was wrong of if she was okay, she said,  
>"We need to go to the Academy. Now. I need to show you something and we need security there, fast."<br>"Okay, I'll call Princess Twilight Sparkle and the EBI. How soon?"  
>"NOW."<p>

Completely ignoring her magical exhaustion, she started to power up her teleportation spell. Charlie realized how idiotic she was being but since he had no idea how to stop a spell from working, he did the only thing he could at that point: he helped her out.  
>Pouring some of his own magic into the spell she was trying to cast helped her significantly. But it quite definitely wasn't enough.<br>"Charlie, I believe I…" Twilight walked in the room with the plastic bag with the rebar inside in her magical grasp. It clattered to the floor as it was released from her grip in her shock. A blue-violet light glowed throughout the room, getting brighter as it got closer to its source, the silhouettes of the two ponies creating the aura grayed out behind the bright light. But this was hardly all of what Twilight saw.

A pony as experienced as Twilight in magic sees the actual arcane power being manipulated in front of them. This is how a magic teacher can tell if their student is performing a spell correctly or how Celestia first saw her student Twilight's magical potential when she was a filly. She saw the huge woven pattern of arcane energy, but for a teleportation spell it wasn't nearly enough. She saw something else within one of the ponies: they were completely exhausted. Their magical potential nearly tapped out, as if they'd already spent it… wait. That just had to be… well then there was one thing she could do.

Twilight saw where they were trying to go and even automatically knew some of why they were trying to go there by means of teleportation when she began feeding her own alicorn magic into the spell. A teleportation spell was incredibly easy for her, though she'd hardly do it unnecessarily. Teleporting three ponies at once would take thrice the effort, but it wouldn't be the hardest magical feat she'd performed. Weaving magic wasn't really much different than weaving threads of any other sort together, just in a more abstract sense.

The three ponies appeared in a bright flash of light – a magenta-colored flash proceeded by several spare strings of blue and green magic – in the Academy's basement. Spitfire shielded her eyes. It had hardly been five minutes since she'd seen Amita disappear. The magic dissipated and three ponies stood there. Spitfire bowed.  
>"Good afternoon, Princess. Amita here explained about getting Charlie but said nothing about getting you as well."<br>"I just thought I'd tag along."  
>"That's what magic that doesn't have enough energy to work… feels like?"<br>"Um… yes, Charlie. Yes it does."  
>"So you did do something." Spitfire raised an eyebrow suspiciously.<br>"Okay, fine, I helped a little."

"It wasn't the best idea for me to try another spell by myself. Thanks Charlie, thanks Twilight."  
>"Just curious though," Charlie gestured with a forehoof, "What happens if a unicorn completely taps out their magic?"<br>"It can seriously impair their functioning for a while, magically and physically. Magical exhaustion carries over to physical exhaustion after a certain point. Also, at that moment it knocks them unconscious and they can't move at all for several hours at least. I've gone to magical exhaustion only a few times under the tutelage of Princess Celestia but she'd always help me up afterward and we'd usually have an early lunch, usually featuring significant amounts of dark chocolate. It helps the mood and magical exhaustion can trigger mood swings in ponies prone to such things, I was as a filly. But chocolate also tastes good and having something good to eat afterward also helps. It's sort of like working out to failure, only more so."

"Speaking of which…" Twilight materialized a few squares of dark chocolate and levitated them over to Amita and Charlie, the squares exchanged auras and each took a bite of their chocolate.  
>"But Charlie and now Twilight, I wanted to bring you here because… well, look at this one." She pointed to a safe on the bottom row near the far-left side.<br>For the second time since he arrived there he stared at an object and expected it to do something. And for the second time it didn't. But Twilight, for the second time, seemed to be able to do it. She seemed to know what Amita was talking about.  
>"I wonder which one of the killers this is." Twilight had no fear in her voice.<p>

"Shouldn't we fill Charlie in? He looks confused."  
>"Yeah."<br>"Okay then. Amita showed me the magical database here. Somepony wiped all the existing lock code and replaced it with a comment string saying that they would be here soon, 'to take the remainder of what's theirs' they said."  
>"Shouldn't the EBI be called in?"<br>"EBI?" Amita looked confused.  
>"Equestrian Bureau of Investigation. The Feds as ponies."<br>"Okay. But why aren't we calling them in, Twilight?"

Twilight unfolded her wings, her horn glowed and she looked around with a glower on her face, wary but intentional and unwavering. Somehow Charlie knew what she was doing. She was probably thinking particularly loudly. He powered up the same spell, apparently it allowed him to see through walls, detect heat signatures and see hidden things generically. He knew because immediately he saw a pegasus, a unicorn and an earth pony behind one of the walls of boxes. The pegasus gestured something to the other two and they stopped in their tracks, nodding. The unicorn and the earth pony seemed to be conversing without moving their mouths, he could only hear a few words here and there. The pegasus was advancing on them, but though she quite definitely had a heat signature he couldn't see her.

Then he heard Twilight's voice and he rapidly turned his head to the side. But she wasn't moving her lips. He darted his head quickly to the other side to make it look less suspicious to the pegasus, still listening to Twilight as she said,  
>"Get beside me. Now. But don't do it quickly. Careful, cautious, normal-looking. Got it?"<br>He slowly backed over toward Twilight.  
>He felt himself growing thinner, paler, as if he was slowly turning invisible, but he held himself where he was.<p> 


	7. Alicorn Magic

Suddenly he felt a powerful surge all through his body, nearly as if he'd just been shocked with some sort of taser, only it wasn't painful. He lost most feeling in his hooves though enough was left that he felt them twitching slightly. His vision completely whited out and, trying to process the feeling, went completely slack-jawed. He quite definitely felt confident, then slightly angry, then slightly more so. Things flashed through his mind that he never remembered happening, feelings rushed through him that he couldn't describe. An incredible sense of empowerment continued to grow. He felt nearly as if he was floating.

When the whiteness left his eyes, the feeling returned to his limbs though this strange feeling continued. He turned 360, Twilight wasn't there and neither was Amita. He was still reading the heat signatures, the other two ponies hadn't moved. Not as if they were statues, but they weren't making any lunch plans. The pegasus was hovering, she looked confused by her body language. He looked at his hooves. He couldn't even see them.

"I appear to be invisible." He only thought it. Then he accidentally teleported across the room. The pegasus whipped around, seeing the flash and charged right toward him, but then he teleported again. She fell into a wall of boxes and they crashed down on top of her. Then the unicorn mare galloped in and shot a beam of magic straight at him, but he created a magical shield and the yellowish beam deflected, bouncing off the ceiling and frying some nearby empty boxes. He teleported behind the unicorn when the earth pony stallion tackled him. He appeared to have become visible again. Then he noticed that the ponies didn't have black coats, they covered fully in black skin-tight suits. The pegasus mare's wings poked out through the holes, so he had a coat color on her – very light yellow. Her tail was a stub and a scruffy mess, he couldn't really tell the color but it looked like it was brown. But his focus had to be on the stallion currently shoving his huge forehooves into his chest.

He shot a beam of powerful magic at the stallion, slamming him hard against the wall. He cut one side of his suit on a sharp piece of metal poking out of the ground and he cut it right down his left hind leg. Charlie got a millisecond's glimpse of a cutie mark, it appeared to be a white figure surrounded by a splotch of black, jarring against his golden coat. Then the stallion carefully covered it with his short brown tail, glaring at Charlie. The pegasus charged at the exact same moment the other two did, the earth pony obviously not going at full speed. Not using the time or magic required to put up a shield, he used a spell he'd only ever read about before and it worked perfectly, holding all three ponies in his aura as they were completely immobile, their worried eyes darting around.

He created a magic dampener for the unicorn and placed it over her horn, two for the pegasus and placed them over her wings, got a set of hoof-cuffs for each and chained them up with unbreakable magical restraints. He used a line he'd probably heard Don use but that he definitely wasn't used to saying,  
>"You sit tight. I'll be right back."<br>Without saying another word he teleported to Twilight's castle in Ponyville. He had to know what was going on. He ended up on her balcony and saw her sitting in the adjoining room. He rushed over and asked why she left and asked what happened to him.

"You couldn't do those things before, I know." Twilight's voice even sounded tired. "I'm sorry I had to leave. But remember what I said about how complete magical exhaustion can cause serious physical damage to a pony? And remember what we read about how pegasi and earth ponies have magic as well? I… believe… our killers are after Rainbow Dash."  
>"What's that have to do with…"<br>"They aren't after breaking her physically. At least not yet. I believe that whoever this is, they're trying to break her friends so they can mentally break her."  
>"The spirit of Loyalty…"<br>"Yes. I drained my magic so they couldn't do it for me. That unicorn… I know her. Only she's not a unicorn. She's an alicorn."

"An alicorn? Then shouldn't she be a Princess?"  
>"Not… necessarily. The title of Princess is… earned. She is very rare indeed, but she is… well, let's leave it at that she's… not… Princess material. She was in… magic kindergarten… with me…" Twilight winced. "She was a stuck-up bully… then… and I wouldn't be surprised… if she still is now."<br>"Do you know her name?"  
>"Golden… Tiara. She's power-hungry… The fact that she's an alicorn… makes that quality even worse. Her magical capability is immense… but there's one more similarity. Only recently… an old enemy found its way… into Equestria. His name was… Tirek… my friends and I put him back… where he belongs… though. However, Golden Tiara… has a talent for sucking magic… out of other ponies… just like Tirek…"<p>

"Hello, Princess. I hope I'm not disturbing anything." The figure bowed mockingly.  
>"Discord… no, you're not… but…"<br>"Oh. Well then, I sensed a strange magical imbalance earlier and I came to note that this pony" he pointed a claw at Charlie, "Is not a pony at all! Is our Princess getting mischievous?"  
>"No. I brought him here… to work on… a case. And about that magical imbalance…"<br>"Oh-oh-oh, lookie what we have here!" Discord turned to face Charlie, "Your highness." He formed his tail into a set of fingers and snapped them, creating a way-too-big ostentatious-looking crown atop his head and a golden cane as well as a red robe.

"Your highness? How long have I been royalty… Discord was it?"  
>"At your service. Oh, and since you got those nifty wings of course!" He pointed a paw to a set of slightly transparent magenta-colored magical wings, extended and connected to his back. He didn't even feel them sitting just below his shoulder blades.<br>"Is this what happens when you give a non-alicorn alicorn magic?"  
>"Why yes, it is, Prince…"<br>"Charlie."  
>"Prince Charles."<p>

"He's… not a Prince… he's holding my magic. As far as I know… nopony but Rainbow Dash… knows who he is or… why he's here… or even _that_ he's here. So as long as this pony isn't looking for him… he is safe… as is my magic."  
>"Impressive strategy, Princess. However I might make a few revisions. Perhaps we could give him all the alicorn magic in Equestria and see how he fares with that."<br>"Discord…"  
>"You did it! He should as well!"<br>"Discord! He's not ready… I also doubt the other Princesses… are in any danger. This pony… doesn't want to take over Equestria… they're either incapable or, more likely… unwilling for some reason."

"Who doesn't want to take over Equestria these days?" He snapped his claws and his short black mane transformed into Rarity's mane. "It's in style!"  
>Twilight rolled her eyes. He snapped his claws again and his normal mane appeared in its place.<br>"Eh, purple really doesn't suit me, don't you think? Whereas black… goes with everything."  
>"Which is basically what you are."<br>"You make a good point."

"Back on topic, what if the pony we're looking for is not any of these three but a ringleader of sorts? Like a gang back home – the leader is protected."  
>"That makes… a certain amount… of sense."<br>"Oh sh…"  
>"What?"<br>"One sec." A flash of light and ten minutes later he was back with three ponies, all hoof-cuffed and restrained.

"Where do I put these three?"  
>"I'll handle it."<br>"No… Discord."  
>"But I have… oh, I suppose you're right. Put them in jail."<br>"Ugh… no. Take them to the EBI for questioning."  
>"Understood. Prince Charles, I shall take them." Discord picked up all three of them under one arm, clicking his claws and disappearing.<p>

"I suppose… he'll call you that… from now on anyways."  
>"It's not the worst title. I'd rather Don call me 'Prince' than 'nerd'."<br>"I'd rather Rainbow call me 'Princess' than 'egghead'."


	8. Caution - Magic Hazard

"You're saying I have to go back to my world?"  
>"Yes. I suspect… she doesn't have access… to interdimensional travel… at least not yet."<br>"I can bring you back if necessary. Until then, you will hold real magic in a world devoid of such things. You can't let anyone know."  
>"Understood, Discord. Thanks Twilight. I'll try." He nodded and sat down in the center of the room. Discord snapped his fingers and suddenly he was standing on all fours on his bedroom floor. He quickly got the hang of standing on two legs again.<p>

He opened his door and saw Amita standing there.  
>"Nice being a person again." She wiggled her fingers.<br>"Agreed. Though…" He lifted his index finger and the door swung shut by itself just because he thought about walking over and closing it.  
>"What was that?"<br>"Long story short, I have magic because Twilight gave hers to me."

He thought about going down the stairs and for a few seconds a pair of wings appeared and instead of simply walking he flew down the stairs.  
>"Then you're gonna have to practice controlling that."<br>"Good idea, but how about I practice not doing it at all?"  
>"That's good." She walked down the stairs and into the kitchen, he followed.<p>

"I wonder if you can use magic unobtrusively. You know…"  
>"I guess I could do something with all that magic so it won't do random things at random times on a whim." He picked up and looked at the list of things that needed to get done that his father had given him. "This could get done quickly."<br>"No, Charlie. What if your dad walks in the door and sees you doing magic? He'll flip out at best. Also, remember that about not showing anybody that Discord told you."  
>"True."<p>

He walked into the garage. Wait, no, he didn't walk there… Then Amita burst through the door.  
>"There you are."<br>"What's wrong?"  
>"You teleported. Accidentally as it seems. Charlie, you've got to get a handle on this. Find something pointless and unnoticeable that you can do with your magic. Meanwhile, try and do <em>something <em>without using magic."  
>"That's more difficult than you'd imagine."<br>"I know. Still, though, it has to happen. And remember what Discord said. Now I won't be saying anything more about what happened beyond what I have to and you shouldn't either."

He had to make a conscious effort to actually reach out his arm and grab a piece of chalk without using any magic. It took equal effort to physically walk over to the chalkboard on his own two feet without using his magical wings. It took some more effort to physically and not psychically move the chalk over the board. Such rudimentary muscle workings were of no note to him before, but now they certainly were and he had to keep half a brain on the simple act of not doing everything with his thoughts. Also, everything was strangely quiet and it took him a while to figure out that he'd been telepathically skimming the thoughts of everyone he encountered and now that he was alone, there were no thoughts to take in but his own.

He wasn't aware of how much time passed before he heard the garage door creak open and heard Don walk down.  
>"Hey Charlie."<br>"Oh, hey Don. Sorry I didn't hear you earlier."  
>"Nah, it's fine. I know how absorbed you can get."<br>"Anything new on that suicide?"  
>"They're saying it's a murder. We finally managed to identify that it was a man who made those footprints, but we don't have anything else."<p>

_They're both male prints. I think Twilight's wrong. I think they know about and can access this dimension. There's too low a probability now that they don't. But she's right about the fact that they most likely don't know I exist. The ringleader is probably staying in Equestria and moving her pawns around while staying put herself. But that begs the question: why did she herself and not one of her pawns go to that safe? Did they know Twilight would be there? Could they have known? I didn't read enough about magic to know for sure. I don't think it would be alright to be breaking the rule that Discord set so early… but would it be necessary? If I got the rebar and explained the Equestrian case, it would give us so much more data to work from…_

Thankfully Charlie didn't need to say anything because Don's cell rang.  
>"Okay, I'll be right there." He flipped it shut. Charlie waited for an explanation.<br>"We've got another. Apparently somebody was pushed off a building, or maybe they fell. We'd have to look into it."  
>"But it looks like a suicide."<br>"Not exactly. She's still breathing."  
>"Okay, I'll be there too."<p>

They arrived at the scene, there was a badly wounded and barely breathing girl in a stretcher whose blonde hair was still partially over one eye and plastered to her face by her own tears. She had huge bruises all over her back and legs; her bright yellow jacket was covered in dirt. There were large blood spatters on the concrete where she'd obviously fallen and the yellow police tape around the outside of the scene. They looked up and saw the top of the rather short city building. It was actually impressive that the blonde girl had survived even this much of a fall; she was tall and spindly with very little muscle on her. She had on a track suit and tennis shoes, all yellow. Her skin was so pale it seemed nearly white.

"Her name's Felicia. Felicia Wise. She's a track runner, has been only because her parents wanted her to be and because her friend is. That friend is the girlfriend of the first victim, her name is Riley Dach." An agent named David informed them as they walked over to meet the girl, she was just starting to sit up and murmur affirmatives to questions asked by medics: "Can you breathe okay?" "Is your rib feeling better?" "Is the pain gone yet?"

"Excuse me, Felicia? We're with the FBI; we have some questions for you." David stood beside the girl's stretcher.  
>Pulling her hair over one bright blue eye, she looked at the ground shyly. She muttered very, very softly, "Mm-hmm…" Her eyes were in a perpetual state of worry and shyness, even if she smiled that wouldn't change.<br>"Do you know your friend Riley's boyfriend?"  
>"Clyde? Oh yes. He looked after my animals for a few days while I was away! Is he here?" She smiled.<br>"Sorry ma'am, he's dead. Somebody murdered him."  
>"Oh."<p>

Felicia was quiet for a few seconds, making everybody around her uncomfortable.  
>"Okay." She said at last. She slowly seemingly forced herself to smile. She sniffled and said, "As Penny would say, 'no amount of grief can change the past. So focus on the positive…' he's in a better place."<br>"We wanted to ask you a few questions about him, if that's all right."  
>"It's… um… no problem." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.<br>"Did he have any enemies?"  
>"Um… no… not that I know of anyway…"<p>

"Do you have any enemies?"  
>"I hope not! Um… I mean… I'm weak and helpless and quiet and I couldn't call out loud enough if somebody wanted to hurt me… But I try to be kind to whoever I meet so I don't get any enemies."<br>"Then did you fall off the building?"  
>"Um… no… or… maybe? I don't remember… I went up to train some of my fletchlings how to fly, it's not that high so they wouldn't get too badly hurt if they did fall, but they had some experience flying a little before so I was comfortable with it. See, I didn't see anybody else up there so I told Emma and Sarah to be careful…"<br>"Emma and Sarah?"  
>"My birds. Anyway they flew just fine, but then… I fell off the edge. That's odd… I… um… I wasn't that close to the edge… but I felt… um… wait a moment."<p>

"No. Somebody pushed me. Somebody was up there and they… THEY PUSHED ME! HOW… HOW DARE THEY?! I COULD HAVE HURT MY BIRDIES WHEN I FELL, NOT TO MENTION MYSELF!"  
>She got so angry she started crying again, scrunching her eyes tightly shut and gritting her teeth. She dug her long fingernails into her arms as if the pain would stop her anger. Then her eyes went wide and she looked around frantically.<br>"Where are Emma and Sarah?" The overly emotional girl was on the verge of tears again as she made a few very accurate bird imitations. Then two small brown birds hopped over and looked up at her as if saying "Don't cry, we're right here." She giggled and held out an arm, they perched on the unbruised sections.

She sang a few notes of a song she probably had just made up. As if they were transported to a fairy tale the birds sang the same notes after her, an octave higher. Several other birds flew out and perched on and around the girl as she sang. The men around her stood wide-eyed.  
>"What can I say?" The girl laughed a little. "I'm good with animals!"<br>"Obviously."  
>Charlie walked over and asked the girl again, just to make sure, "What's your name?"<br>"Um… it's Felicia Wise… why do you ask?"  
>"Thanks."<p>

He walked over to Amita who was standing near the border of the scene.  
>"Felicia Wise."<br>"I thought so." Her voice was low, but not too suspicious. "Twilight contacted me; she told me that Fluttershy was recently hurt. She assumes that since Fluttershy couldn't fly in the first place, robbing her of her magic wouldn't do much. Physically harming her or her animals would."  
>"Why didn't whoever it was kill her?"<br>"They probably tried to. But neither Fluttershy nor this girl goes up all that high unless they have a strong reason to. Have you controlled that… you know…"

"Yeah, I think I have it under control." A few random things moved around, making no noise and attracting no attention. He laughed, quietly and rather nervously.  
>"That's good." She didn't seem to notice. "Twilight wants us back. Is it okay?"<br>"Yep. Let me tell Don I'm going back, then I'll take us."  
>"You can do that?"<br>"As much as I'd love it not to be, these powers are growing pretty steadily."  
>"You can teleport across dimensions now."<br>"Yep."

"Hey Don?"  
>"Yeah Charlie?"<br>"T.S… uh… she just… called me and she wants me back. Is that okay?"  
>"Uh, yeah, sure. You know where Amita is? I haven't seen her for a few days."<br>"Yeah. I have to take her with me, though."  
>"…Kay. What happens when this T.S. takes you there? Do you just disappear?"<br>"Uh… sort of? I don't know. It's sort of like teleportation, I guess. I'll tell her I'm ready and you can watch, I suppose."  
>"She normally does it? T.S., I mean?"<br>"Uh, yeah."  
>"How does she do it, magic?" He laughed.<br>"I suppose." Charlie laughed as well, though his was fairly nervous.

With that, not wanting to do it himself for how much concentration that would take and how it would look too obviously like he was the one doing it; he sent a telepathic signal to Discord, telling him to bring him back over. Discord's signal came back slightly staticy and Charlie could only assume that he was pretending to talk over walkie-talkie.  
>"<em>Roger that, Prince Charles. However I have only one thing I needed you for. The Princess says that our villainess has gotten into your world, so take caution, but I sense that you already knew that.<em>"  
>"<em>Yeah.<em>"  
>"<em>Oh, and one more thing. Our villainess has also figured out that somebody else holds Miss Sparkle's alicorn magic. However, there is one thing she has wrong. She believes that the current holder of this magic is our favorite programmer. You have to protect her. …This pony's after Amita.<em>"


	9. Granny Pi

"_I can't tell her. Discord told me not to. Twilight trusts him._"  
>He nervously paced the living room. Nobody else was there. The room began to glow red, blue and black as the man pacing it became more anxious. The colors began swirling around the room, creating a slowly darkening display of light and shadow. Suddenly he heard somebody burst through the door. Thinking as quickly as he could he materialized a gemstone and a flashlight, shining the light of the flashlight through the gemstone to pretend that was what was making this light.<p>

"Hey Charlie, there's been another one and I'd like… what're you doing?"  
>"Oh, hey Don." He turned the flashlight off and made himself calm down. "Analyzing refraction patterns. What's up?" Thank goodness for techno babble.<br>"I have another case. This girl seems to have just suddenly gone emo; she nearly died of blood loss. We're waiting for her to wake up right now, but when she does we're gonna ask her what happened. Until then, we have a permit from her grandmother to search her apartment. Apparently this girl lives with her grandmother. Girl's name is Penny, Felicia's friends with her."  
>"Okay then, I'll be right there." He left the flashlight and the gemstone on the counter, walking out the door.<p>

They arrived at the apartment complex and went up to room 5E. A cheery elderly woman with silvery hair tied up in a bun with a pink ribbon and a blue apron over a white dress opened the door.  
>"Hello there. I assume you're with the FBI? Yes, right this way. My granddaughter's room is this one right here."<br>She opened a bright pink-painted door that had its own doormat. There were two large shoeprints on it, one turned toward the door as if entering and the other facing the other way.  
>"That's odd," said the grandmother, "Penny's foot isn't nearly that big, nor is mine…"<p>

A gunshot was fired just past the grandmother's shoulder. She fell to the ground and leaned up against the wall. She wasn't hurt but she didn't want to become that way. Charlie and Don ducked behind a bookcase that was full of recipe books. Charlie, who'd fought with magic but not guns, was utterly terrified. This shone through quite clearly as he shoved himself as far back into the wall as possible. Don leaned out from behind the bookcase and several shots were fired at him, he shot back in that direction a few times and ducked back behind the bookcase.

This game of shoot-at-them-and-then-duck-behind-something continued until one of the shots got a little too close and drove itself into Don's shoulder. He grits his teeth; he fired a few more shots and then slammed backward into the wall, splattering blood down the cheery blue wallpaper. The grandmother crawled into the adjoining room and shut the door, she probably was hiding somewhere. Out of ammo and badly bleeding with a brother next to him who was more terrified than a mouse trapped in an eagle's claws. …Or so he thought.

Charlie was actually using a short-range spell to try and detect whoever it was that was shooting at them. He didn't seem to pick up anything until he heard a voice and rapidly afterwards the signature of a woman, walking down the hallway. He knew that voice.  
>"<em>You have to protect her.<em>" The voice rung through his head. Within the next few milliseconds he had to decide between protecting her and not using magic.

He chose the former.

Within the next fraction of a millisecond he powered up the magic necessary for a shield spell. He had to, first and foremost, protect Amita. After that he had to get them all out of there. He didn't have the concentration or the words to telepathically tell Amita anything. As when he'd normally tap Twilight's alicorn magic, the aura was foremost magenta with some of his purple aura intertwined. To do anything harder he'd need a line of sight, so he jumped out into the open and took several bullets before giving himself a magical shield. Yet what he didn't expect was that this person had magic as well.

Inside his head he knew that he should be scared. Terrified, actually. Yet just as right before that fight Twilight had been steadfast and seemingly fearless, so was he. He felt like a bystander in his own body, trapped inside his mind and watching somebody else take control. If it was just him, he'd still be against the wall, utterly terrified. Then again, if it was just him, he'd have no magic. "_So this has to be Twilight, and apparently when you receive somepony's magic you also receive their personality._"

He simply stopped thinking overly much and let Twilight's personality take over as he watched as the floor below his feet crumble. Thankfully he created his magical wings and hovered there, all this magic taking a lot out of him. Don stared at his brother in some combination of awe and horror as he proceeded to shoot a huge beam of magic from the palms of his hands. Moments afterwards, a beam of bright yellow clashed with his and he shot his down into the ground, she was forced to create a magical bubble for her to float in. She seemed to be working harder than he; either that or she had less magic. Either way, slowly he was winning.

He winced, every muscle straining to keep up with the arcane energy pulsing through his unadjusted human body. As a unicorn this would have been so much easier. He couldn't even see anymore, his eyes scrunched so tightly shut for the brilliant light in front of him. He closed them altogether when the strain on his eyes was just too much and the sweat started running down his face for some combination of the heat created by the insane amounts of magic and the strain caused by such magic. His palms burned, his heartbeat echoed through his ears so loudly that it even managed to be heard over the overwhelming sound of pulsing magic. Yet he was still winning.

Then something completely different happened. Amidst the chaos he heard one noise. It was a voice. It spoke a word. She spoke a name. It was _his_ name. He hadn't even been paying attention to keeping up that shield. He'd sworn to protect her and he'd simply forgotten. He knew where she was now. This other person had shot a hole in the wall and shot her back thorough it; she was hanging off the edge of a balcony, just barely at that. She'd called out to him, by some odd miracle he heard her and now he had to save her.  
>"<em>Hold on.<em>"

He stopped being remotely offensive, creating a shield bubble around himself and doing his best to simply deflect the magic beam being shot at him. He squinted, looking at the yellow magical beam dissipating when it came into contact with his shield. He looked in the direction he'd heard the voice and extended one arm in that direction; spreading his fingers he lifted his arm up rapidly, creating a floating bubble. He carefully cast a protective shield spell around her. He felt weak and tired; his shield was barely staying intact.

Suddenly he felt a surge of magic very similar to when he'd first gotten alicorn magic. Though this time he felt something much stranger. He felt as if he was holding the essence of order and the essence of chaos at the same time. Yet instead of conflicting the two seemed to be mixing, though at first they'd seemed unmixable like oil and water, it seemed to be working. He opened his eyes, glaring up at the person firing at him. Then he smiled, nearly evilly as his eyes began to glow a reddish color. The other person looked over, looking notably scared.

He magically recreated the ground below him, creating a pink-and-purple checkerboard. He stood there as he encased the entire room in a large fishbowl-like magical dome. He snapped his fingers and Amita was instantly teleported into the dome with them.  
>"How… is this possible?! This makes no sense!" exclaimed the woman, firing beams of magic from her fingertips that repetitively dissipated into the black-and-purple swirling magical dome.<br>"Oh, come now." Charlie's eyes flashed red as he spoke in a tone that wasn't his. "What's the fun in making sense?"

He held out a hand, an open palm. Slowly he closed his fingers; a nearly snakelike aura began to wrap itself around the woman, constraining her movements. She called out but she wasn't even heard. The aura enclosed her entire body, a floor was created beneath her of the same coloration as the one he'd created before and with a single swift motion of his wrist the woman dropped onto the ground, everything but her face enclosed within the aura. He walked over and through the dome and she pleaded for him to let her go. He simply raised an eyebrow.

Several suspenseful seconds passed before he rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers, releasing her from the bounds.  
>"Run along, little pony." He smiled and waved before clicking his fingers once more as she disappeared in a flash of light.<br>The instant she disappeared he collapsed to his knees, breathing heavily. He looked straight up and a mass of chaotic blackness escaped, disappearing soon afterwards. When this ball of entropic energy left he immediately collapsed.

The cuts and bullet wounds that had previously been invisible became visible, blood staining his shirt on his left shoulder, along with it clinging to a scratch on the outside of his right arm and to a mess of a chest wound with which the bullet probably only got as far in as one of his lower ribs. Still he managed to sit up, though he wobbled a good bit. Amita sat there, too tired to move but too in shock to speak. Don was either unconscious or had lost too much blood to do anything. Most likely the only reason that Charlie was still alive was because of all that deus ex machina god-magic stuff, that's how most would have justified it. And to be fair it was mostly right.

Charlie was panting hard as he carefully placed his right hand over his chest wound; it glowed for a few seconds before the wound healed itself. Though the spell was complicated he could still manage it, he healed his shoulder wound and decided to let the cut on his right arm heal itself. He had more complicated things to worry about. He ran nervously over to Don, felt his brother's pulse and muttered "YES!" He placed a hand over his brother's bleeding wound and closed his eyes. There was a chance that the damage was just too much for him to heal. Yet he managed to close the hole made by the shot, pouring a reasonable amount of magic into his brother to make up for the blood loss.

Don woke up to Charlie asking, "Are you okay?"  
>"Ugh… yeah, I think so. What happened? I had the weirdest dream…"<br>"Did that dream involve Charlie shooting colorful lasers from his hands?" Amita slowly and carefully walked over. She was still tired but she was regaining her strength.  
>"Yeah… wait a minute. You're saying…"<br>"It wasn't a dream. Charlie, care to explain that?"  
>"Uh…"<p>

The grandmother cautiously looked out the door. She walked over and asked everybody if they were okay. Everybody said something like that they were fine now. The grandmother said,  
>"Good, that's very nice. Is whoever was doing all that shooting gone? I hope so."<br>"Yeah, she's gone. Charlie… well, I'm not sure what he did. He was just going to explain.?"  
>"Uh… yeah."<br>"I do so love a good story!"  
>"Okay. So, when I first woke up in Equestria I had no idea where I was…"<p>

He proceeded to tell them a summed-up version of what he experienced from day one. The grandmother acted like an enthused child the entire time, Don looked confused and every once in a while Amita would nod. When he finished with how he still didn't know what caused that feeling like he was holding the essence of chaos. Amita suggested Discord and pointed out that his eyes glowed red. Charlie then said that in all probability she was right (in Charlie world, this is agreeing). Then they had to explain Discord and alicorn magic to Don.


	10. The Catch

"Unfortunately, that just destroyed most chance of us finding any evidence around here." Don sighed.  
>"Not quite." The grandmother opened the door and showed them into her granddaughter's room, it was completely untouched.<br>"Why didn't that person destroy this room?" Charlie looked around, it _was _untouched. "She had the full capability to."  
>"I would do it." Don pointed that out.<br>"So why didn't she?" Charlie looked on the dresser, everything was a shade of pink or a shade of magenta excepting the ceiling fan and the joined lamp which were the same blue as the wallpaper in the other room. Three balloons of yellow and blue were drawn on the mirror in marker. There was some blood on the floor and a small knife that was covered in blood as well.

There didn't seem to be any other signs that this girl was overly emotional or willing to cut herself. Though there was blood spattering on the bed there was also a very large depression into the covers that was very much not teenage girl sized.

"Hey, Don? There was somebody else on this bed."  
>"You're right… who else would be on this bed? Excuse me, ma'am, but…" Don turned to talk to the grandmother.<br>"Please, call me Granny Pi."  
>"Granny Pi, have you ever slept on this bed?"<br>"No, not ever. That's my granddaughter's bed, I have my own!"  
>"Does she have a boyfriend?"<br>"Yes, his name is Porter Pierce, they're so cute! But he wasn't here recently."  
>"Did she have any other visitors?"<br>"Not that I know of, but I was gone the past two days."

"Hey Amita, you thinking that one of Golden's pawns is responsible for this?"  
>"Yes… she could have been cut by somebody else instead. I don't see why Golden would want to come here, but one of her pawns could have cut Penny."<br>"That's a possibility. But I wonder as well why Golden herself would come just to shoot at us. Wouldn't she prefer not to risk her life?"  
>"That's what I was thinking."<br>"Hey Charlie, look at this." Don pointed at a pile of golden glittery eyeshadow on the pink carpeted floor with an empty container that obviously had held it before next to the pile.  
>"Doesn't look like evidence." He levitated the container up to inspect it. "Says 'Lightning Dust'. Strange name for a… wait a minute."<p>

"What is it, Charlie?"  
>"Amita, remember that about Lightning Dust?"<br>"No…"  
>"She's a pony Rainbow Dash made an enemy of at the Academy. Rainbow said that our first victim, Cloud Dasher, he made an enemy of Lightning as well. But since Lightning was in the Discord Company the whole time, that means Cloud must have been in the Discord Company as well but he got out somehow. The records were deliberately unchanged because that somepony in the Academy is on the same side as our killer."<br>"Who could that be?"  
>"I don't know. We'll have to check the Academy records; we'd have to ask Spitfire for those. For now, it might be a good idea to talk to Lightning Dust. She has to know something about the Discord Company and how to get out. Hey Don, would you be okay with going to Equestria? You're better at… well, your job."<p>

"I'd hope so. Uh… how long would that take?"  
>"Not long. A day maybe. I'll ask Spitfire to make it quick."<br>"Alright. You can teleport us all?"  
>"Yeah. Come over here. Thanks Granny Pi."<br>"No problem, honey."  
>Charlie said no more, when everybody was standing next to him he nodded, closed his eyes and focused on where he wanted to go. Namely, the Wonderbolts Academy. Fully aware that he'd never been there himself, he tapped into Amita's memory and got an image from her. Having experienced magic before and knowing exactly what he was doing, she smiled. Most couples aren't ever inside each others' heads. Lucky for her, she thought. In reply, he telepathically told her that he really wasn't that great. He was actually able to do this at the same time as he was working on an interdimensional teleportation spell for three people. I disagree with him; I think he is that great.<p>

~Meanwhile…

The doors to the throne room of Twilight's castle were burst open. Sitting on their thrones were all of the seven. Fluttershy with her damaged and bandaged wings folded behind her, the large bruises and cuts on her hooves cared for and disinfected. Pinkie Pie with her tail covering her rear leg that was covered entirely in scars. Rainbow Dash whose mane was slicked back and slightly wet from all the washing her face in water it took to wash away the tears. Rarity whose coat and hair were slightly messy due to her excessive taking care of her friends. Applejack who was keeping her lips zipped tight to make sure she spoke nothing for she could not tell a lie. Spike who was nervously looking up at Twilight. And the alicorn princess Twilight herself, who had a very determined look deliberately plastered on her weary face.

A pegasus flew through the doors and into the center of the room. She turned to face Twilight and hovered there.  
>"Princess Twilight, I see. And her friends. I hope you all can refrain firing your bloody friendship cannon at me for this short time so we can talk."<br>"We are ready to talk, Lightning Dust. Speak your part."  
>"Geez, so formal. Permission to sit down, Princess?"<br>"Granted."  
>"Ugh. Whatever. Anyway, I came 'cause I wanted to make a deal. Permission to do that, your grand highness of epic whatever?"<br>"Granted."

Lightning sighed and facehoofed. "Anyway. Here's my offer. See, Princess, I know where you put your magic. Golden told me that you gave it all to some dude. You give me that dude…" she made a clicking noise with her teeth and in a bubble of her golden aura, Golden Tiara brought in all three Princesses. "And you get them back."  
>"Or else?"<br>"Or else I steal all their alicorn magic. You know Golden here is capable of both stealing magic and the transfer required to give me a horn and make me a Princess like I so righteously deserve."  
>"Yes, I do. However there is one thing you are missing, Lightning Dust."<br>"Yeah? And what's that?"

Celestia cleared her throat and pointed at her flank, peeling off the sticker she had put on her flank. Lightning looked over in shock. There was no cutie mark there. Each of the other Princesses did the same. They smiled smugly.  
>"Where IS YOUR MAGIC?!" Lightning Dust screamed.<br>"Somewhere… you will never get it… Lightning Dust." Princess Celestia glared at her.  
>Twilight smiled and winked at the Princesses while Lightning's eyes were closed. "Now that our plan is complete I suppose… you'll be leaving now."<br>"You PLANNED THIS?!" Lightning looked confused and vexed at the same time and as such her voice came out in a screech.  
>"In advance. What… you expected that… you could go up against… the great Twilight Sparkle… with no catch?"<p> 


	11. Chuck

As he was teleporting Charlie felt this sudden surge of intense magic. Like the first time only more so. And he detected a similar magical imbalance on either side of him. They teleported instantly into the air high above the Academy. Charlie, used to flying, caught himself. Amita created herself a magical bubble to stand in. And Don fell onto a nearby cloud only a few feet down.  
>"That was strange. Hey Don, you seem to be… wait a minute." His brother had both a horn and wings. A set of magical wings.<br>"Yes Charlie?" Don asked. "That… came out of nowhere. This is odd…"  
>"This is odder. Charlie, I feel… weird."<br>"So do I."  
>Both Don and Amita shot him a look that said "Really?"<br>"I mean weirder than before. I felt like that time when Twilight gave me her magic… only more so." He accidentally teleported a few feet to the left and back again.

"This spell used to be hard." Amita gestured a forehoof to the bubble around her.  
>Then in a green flame appeared a scroll, right in front of Charlie. They all teleported to the ground (thanks to Charlie's extra uncontrolled magic) right before Charlie read it aloud,<br>"My friend Charlie,  
>I have been informed that the other three alicorn Princesses – Celestia, Luna and Cadence – have bestowed their magic upon you, your brother Don and Amita, respectively. I hope this will not cause too much trouble; I had no say in the matter. One thing to note: You shall be in charge of raising and setting the sun. It's like levitation, think of it just the same. Your brother shall be tasked with the moon, but if he cannot, you must take charge of that as well. Amita needn't to worry about the Crystal Empire; my brother can take care of that.<br>-Princess Twilight Sparkle."

~Days ago, in the library…

The door opened and Twilight walked in.  
>"Hey, Twilight Sparkle. I was just going to look for you. I have a question. What on- in Equestria does 'raising the sun' mean?"<br>"Oh, that's simple. Princess Celestia uses her magic to move the sun over the horizon, beginning the daytime."  
>"No no no. That's not simple, that's impossible. The very idea of raising the sun is in the wrong perspective. The sun is fairly stationary and the Earth orbits the sun, not the other way around. The sun and moon don't rotate around the Earth, the Earth orbits the sun and the moon orbits Earth."<br>"That's not how it works in…"

"The sun is much farther away from Earth and much larger than the moon, even if they were forcibly moving the sun and moon around the Earth and keeping the Earth stationary in the process, the fact that they were doing so would make Princess Celestia exponentially more powerful than Princess Luna, given what I've read about magic and levitation of massive objects!"  
>"Princess Celestia is more powerful than Princess Luna. Not by much, but…"<br>"The sun has a mass in kilograms of 1.9891 times 1030 or 19891 with 26 zeroes, that's about 19 nonillion. The moon's mass in kilograms is 7.34767309 times 1022 or 734767309 with 14 zeroes, that's about 747 sextillion. The difference between them is 19890999265232691 with 14 zeroes." He wrote the numbers down with a quill and ink on a piece of parchment.

"Settle, Charlie. If I wanted somepony to tell me which had more mass, the sun or the moon, I wouldn't have brought you over here. I know that. However, Princess Celestia has been entrusted with the sun, and Luna with the moon. They are roughly equal in power because that Celestia has a talent with moving the sun, same as Luna has one with the moon. Have you gotten to my books on the affect cutie mark talents have on magic?"  
>"No…"<br>"Here you go." Twilight levitated one over.  
>"Thanks."<p>

~Currently…

Charlie looked at a clock nearby, it was 8:30 p.m. yet the sun was sitting patiently near the horizon, waiting to be set. "Great."  
>"I'm not even sure what being tasked with the moon means." Don was completely confused.<br>"It's fine, I'll teach you how to be a unicorn- or alicorn as the case may be- later. For now, let me do it."  
>"You know you're even more intimidating than usual with godlike powers?"<br>"I'd assume so. I guess Princess Celestia gets lots of that." With that his horn began to glow a bright yellow as he took control of the sun. It was like trying to get a bowling ball to go up a steep hill by pushing it with a stick. The large and bright ball of light bobbled a good bit and nearly rose right back up as he tried to get it to go. Then he had to get the moon up. There was an audible whooshing noise as it went up, then another as it went right back down and a reverse sunset occurred in triple speed. It was an odd spectacle from the ground as well. Without a single beat of his magical wings Charlie was hovering off the ground, his hooves twitching uncontrollably as his eyes were scrunched tightly shut. Then he opened them when the moon… it suddenly seemed to have risen by itself.

He looked over and saw a very surprised-looking Don with a white aura around his horn as he stared at the moon that he was obviously raising without having any control of it. He was definitely having a much easier time of it than Charlie had of setting the sun.  
>"Hey Charlie? What am I doing?"<br>"That, Don, is raising the moon."  
>Spitfire walked out of the main building and saw these three alicorns standing there on her grounds. "Care to explain what's going on?"<br>"Uh… yeah. From what I gather, we each got the alicorn magic of the three remaining Princesses." Amita shrugged. "They each have a celestial body to take care of, and I just… well, I just seem to stand here and watch."

Suddenly Charlie knew this perfectly applicable, minute detail that he hadn't known before. "You know, Princess Twilight felt just like that before. She felt like all she seemed to do was smile and wave. You're not useless. If it helps you can help me raise the sun at dawn. You saw how crappy I was at it just now."  
>He had yet to know how he knew that. Probably results of having Twilight's magic – a few of her memories as well.<br>Amita smiled. "Thanks Charlie."

Charlie nodded and proceeded to change the subject, turning to Spitfire. "Actually, Spitfire? Have you seen Lightning Dust recently?"  
>"Uh… no. She's supposed to be back, actually."<br>As if on cue, Lightning Dust zipped in and landed. The second she did so, Charlie cast a spell to make their wings disappear. "Eh Spitfire. Who're the new ponies?"  
>Don started to answer, and then Charlie stopped him. "My name is… Chuck, my friends' names are Dawn and… Lily."<br>"Kay then, Chuck. I heard you wanted to talk to me." Lightning grinned.  
>"As a matter of fact, your name is one I've heard often."<p>

"Next to Rainbow Crash, I'm sure."  
>"Who?"<br>"Ya know, Rainbow Dash?"  
>"Never heard of her." Charlie spun, talking to Spitfire. "Can you get them a chariot back to Ponyville?"<br>"…Sure. Dawn, Lily, come with me."  
>Charlie sent a telepathic signal to Amita, telling her that he knew what he was doing and to tell Don to play along with it.<p>

"Not that you need to have heard of Rainbow Crash, _I'm_ the best flier in Equestria."  
>"I believe it! I wanted to ask the great Lightning Dust something, though."<br>"Sure, pal."  
>"Do you have some kind of vendetta against anypony? I heard you really didn't like somepony named Cloud Dasher."<p>

"Oh yeah. Yeah, I didn't like 'im much."  
>"I was just wondering, because your enemy is mine, so I wanted to take care of him for you."<br>"Oh, haven't you heard?" Lightning leaned in and whispered to him. "I killed him."  
>There was a pause.<p>

"That I didn't know. Anypony else you don't like? I'd be happy to take care of them for you."  
>"Nah. I'm following a pattern." She whispered again. "I'm gonna fool the police. Rainbow Crash won't even know what hit 'er."<br>Another pause.

Charlie glanced up at the clock. "I've got to be leaving now. I'll be on that chariot with them. Anyway, I'll be seeing you."  
>"You too! Thanks Chuck, I'll be seeing ya around!"<br>Charlie hopped on the chariot. The second the doors closed and they were off the ground and well out of earshot of any eavesdropping ponies, Don asked, "What did you want to talk to her about? Why'd you call Amita 'Lily'?"

"I didn't want to expose our real identities. There's a drastic difference between our world and theirs, Don, but I think she could crack the code if she was given enough data. We're going to earn Lightning's trust so we can learn what she's planning. Now, she said she was following a pattern. I don't know what it is yet, but I can figure that out."  
>"Why does that sound slightly evil?" Amita chuckled.<br>"Not sure. But from now on, whenever we're around Lightning…" He sighed. "I go by 'Chuck'."


	12. Nightmare

"Eh, Charlie?" Amita opened the door to the room Twilight had allocated for him and saw every wall covered in chalkboards, layers upon layers of them. Charlie was hovering near one and levitating the chalk around to note down several other things, checking several other chalkboards before writing down several more notes. He turned.  
>"Oh, hey Amita. What is it?" He flew straight over to the door. The floor was covered in decoding books as well as several on magic theory and several more on sequences and patterns and data analyses.<p>

"What kind of tornado hit this room?"  
>"I've been thinking over what happened at that apartment and I've developed a clean profile on the pony version of Golden Tiara. Reason I didn't see any wings on her before is that she isn't a natural alicorn. Like you, I and Don, she got wings by tapping a significant amount of alicorn magic. The question is where she got it from; I'm just now narrowing down the possibilities."<br>"I came to tell you that it's time to raise the sun. Charlie, you stayed up all night! When was the last time you slept?"  
>"Sleep is irrelevant. I'll raise the sun and then I'll get right back to this. Lightning Dust has to have some connection to Cloud's murder and to the murder of Clyde in our universe; I just don't know what it is yet."<p>

They walked out onto the porch. Charlie tried to get the sun to move. He was too tired; he hadn't eaten in nearly half a day.  
>"Charlie, you need your sleep…"<br>"Not until I… finish… this case… and find… who… did this." He tried again, but again the sun refused to budge. It was almost as if the heavenly body refused to be risen until its bearer got some rest.  
>"At least let me help you."<br>"…Sure…"  
>They raised the sun together, it was hard but they succeeded, Don had already set the moon.<p>

"I'll get Spike to make you some breakfast. You have to eat something. I'll bring it to you in your office."  
>"…Okay." He was too tired to argue that it wasn't his office.<br>Slowly he walked back to the room, lying down on one of the stacks of books. It was strangely comfortable. He could just…

No. He wouldn't allow himself to sleep. Wearily he looked back over to the chalkboard where he'd left off his work. All his life he'd been doing as much math as possible at every opportunity. However, now he really wanted to do anything but get up from his comfy stack of books and do more math, crunch more numbers in an effort to find some pattern. But yet he felt like he was missing something.  
>"Charlie, I brought you some oatmeal…" Amita levitated a bowl of oatmeal with a spoon in it.<p>

"Thank you… so much…" He levitated over both and rapidly devoured it.  
>"Actually Charlie… how about you take a quick nap? I'll wake you up after two hours, okay?"<br>She didn't have to tell him twice. He lay back down onto the stack of books and was instantly asleep. She smiled, walked out and closed the door.

~Meanwhile…

Charlie woke up in the same room he'd been in before, though he didn't feel the slightest bit tired. He looked around at all the chalkboards holding his work; all of a sudden they were just symbols. As if he was reading another language, no particular number or string of data really jumped out at him. It seemed that he'd just forgotten how to do math.

Amita walked through the door. "Charlie?"  
>"Amita?"<br>"Yes. Have you made any progress, or have you been snoozing this whole time?"  
>Nervously he looked around at the boards, covered in symbols he was ignorant to. "Uh…"<br>"That's what I thought. Honestly, if I'd known that our relationship meant that little to you, I'd never have wanted to date you."  
>"I… I don't… what do you mean? I thought…"<br>She rolled her eyes. "Puh-leez. I nearly died in that apartment and you respond by napping? Seriously? I mean look at you! You can't understand anything! I might as well take over this case myself! I don't know what's so special about you. Genius indeed."

He desperately wanted to tell her what was going on, but somehow he couldn't, like there was no breath left in his lungs. What he'd intended to be a pleading cry had turned out as a meager whimper. The kind of sound you'd hear from a sad puppy dog, cowardly walking away with his tail between his legs. And she just walked away.

~…

He woke up with a gasp. He was being gently shaken awake, out of that nightmare. A gentle hoof tapped his shoulder.  
>"Charlie, are you okay? You looked like you were having some kind of nightmare."<br>He hopped off the book stack and spun around. All these symbols and digits made sense now. His ability and his knowledge had returned to him. And one more thing came that hadn't been there before.

He took down a giant eraser and wiped a board clean of previous chalk markings. He drew a small, square box. Then another of the same size right next to it. He continued spiraling these boxes around, labeling each one: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13…  
>"I don't understand… Charlie, that's…"<br>"The Fibonacci sequence. I thought there was some pattern to the attacks but I couldn't figure out what it was. These represent days. That's why the first few were clustered like that. Cloud being killed was only a day apart from Felicia's injury. But I was told that Fluttershy, another of Rainbow Dash's friends, was hurt on the same exact day as Felicia Wise. After that came the fake-emo thing with Pinkie Pie as well as that girl who lived with her grandmother in our world: Penny Pi."

"You think there's a correlation?"  
>"I'm pretty sure of it. And with that I can predict the date of the next attack."<br>"Why would they follow the Fibonacci sequence? That would make the days grow further apart."  
>"True. But she told me she was going to fool the police. I think that's exactly what she's going for."<br>"But you still can't predict which of the three others they're going to hit next!"  
>He erased another board and pointed the end of the eraser at it. "Yet."<br>"You know I wouldn't think any less of you if you wanted to sleep some more first. According to the Fibonacci sequence, they won't strike until tomorrow."  
>"You wouldn't?"<br>"Absolutely not. …Would you prefer it if I stayed here?"  
>He nodded.<p> 


	13. Cluster Analyses

Charlie woke to the sound of chalk on a board, a sound he rarely heard when he wasn't the one causing it.  
>"I see you're up. Have a nice nap?"<br>"Yeah. What time is it?"  
>"5:34 p.m. Don't worry, we're fine. I worked out something that tests possible suspects against previous criteria, I talked to Twilight and the most likely next target is Applejack. That has a plus side: she rarely leaves the farm. That same thing is a minus side: we have no way of knowing where she is at any given moment. She insisted on going back to the farm, even after I told her that she was at risk."<p>

"We use a pattern recognition algorithm. A multivariate regression analysis along with a cluster analysis. That could tell us where she'd be at any given time if we have data on her past behavior."  
>"And I'm sure Twilight has some of that."<p>

"You're… telling me… that we can predict… where they're going to strike next… with her… past behavior?"  
>"We think so. It'll at least tell her where she is most often."<br>"Charlie, I don't… think I understand. Unless… they know this too… that won't help…"  
>"They've known where their past victims have been to a T. Even when Lightning Dust killed Cloud she knew he was going to be in the forest. All of Golden's victims thus far have been…"<br>"You… mean… Lightning's victims."  
>"Aren't they two separate- you're saying that Golden works for Lightning? Why? She's an alicorn with exponentially more power!"<br>"I… don't know."

"That means that we're _not_ looking at two killers, we're looking at a _single one_ with astonishing manipulative capabilities! And that one is Lightning Dust! I wouldn't even be surprised if she manipulated a mathematician to do these numbers for her!"  
>"Here's where your brother would be useful."<br>"That's what I originally just wanted him to do. I didn't expect that the Princesses would pick him to raise the moon. But he seems to be good at it…"  
>"Anyways, Twilight, do you know offhand what Applejack's daily routine is around now?"<br>"Actually… yes… I do…"

~Meanwhile, at Sweet Apple Acres…

Applejack hummed a tune to herself as she walked into her barn. She's just finished the last of the day's chores though her older brother Macintosh still had work to do. Her little sister Apple Bloom was off crusading with her two friends, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo, so the farm pony had some alone time, and she planned to spend it napping. She took the red bands off the ends of her mane and tail, laying in a soft pile of hay. Suddenly she heard a knock on the barn door. Reluctantly she got up, walking over and opening the top of the two-parted door.

"What is it? Ah was just gonna get some rest." Applejack didn't recognize the pony that stood at the door. She had an orange coat, she wore a black sweater. Her eye color reminded Applejack of her friend Rainbow, though her icy glare did not.  
>"Apologies for disturbing you, miss. I just wanted…" the unicorn mare summoned a magical blade and pointed it straight at the earth pony, "You to tell me who Twilight gave her magic to."<br>This unicorn had obviously come after the Element of Honesty for a reason. If you don't want to be lied to, Applejack would be the first pony to go to.  
>"Ah- Ah'm afraid… ya've got the wrong pony… um… Ah've got no idea what you're talkin about…"<br>"Oh. I see. You know, miss Element of Honesty, you are the most terrible liar I have ever met!" She hissed, "Now tell me where the Princesses put their magic!"

"She said she doesn't know. Leave her alone." An alicorn in a cloak pulled out her own magical blade and pointed it at the unicorn. She threw her head back, flipping the hood off her cloak. She glared at the unicorn.  
>"P-P-Princess… Twilight? B-B-But… you aren't… you can't be…"<br>"Sorry to disappoint. Now leave my friend alone before I decide to put this blade to good use."  
>"Y-Yes, Princess!" And with that the unicorn ran off.<p>

The alicorn turned to Applejack. "Are you all right?"  
>"Yeah. Twilight, is that really you?"<br>"No," the alicorn transformed suddenly, her purple coat changing color and her hair restyling itself, her wings becoming slightly transparent magical ones, "But I am getting better at transformation spells."  
>"Hey, ya're that programmer pony Twilight was talkin about! Amita, was it? Pleasure meeting ya!"<br>"Yes. Pleasure is all mine, miss Applejack."  
>"Shucks, ya can just call me Applejack. AJ, even. If there's a pony who likes goin' by 'miss', that'll be Rarity, not me."<br>"All right, Applejack."

"Hey, Chuck? That algorithm of yours worked. Not sure how you did it, but Twilight sure made a good decision with you." Rainbow hovered around the room, cleaning books off the floor.  
>"It's a simple pattern recognition algorithm. It won't solve the problem forever, but it'll solve it for now. I'll have to get to work on a predictive analysis if I'm going to predict the rest of these attacks. The next target would have to be Rarity if they now think that Applejack is too much of a threat. They'll certainly come back to her though, these ponies seem fairly determined."<br>"I didn't just stop by to help you clean these books up, ya know."

"Then why'd you come?"  
>"I was flying earlier and I recognized the pony from one of Rarity's sketches, name's Golden Tiara, she was in a blue vest that she'd obviously had for a while, several seams were popped, though it can't have been of too much value 'cause she has a lot of money and could've gotten it replaced if she wanted to. The vest covered her magical wings almost entirely, though if somepony was looking they could've seen a wing-tip. That and the fact that the vest was fairly loose made it so I couldn't really make it out, but I think her wings are yellow like her aura and they're shaped similarly to Princess Luna's. Golden was leaving a weapons shop with a plastic bag, given how much the bottom of the bag was sagging I'd say that she was carrying a bow, arrows, a small dagger… and a club."<p>

"You know all this just by flying by?"  
>"Yep. Oh, and I have a few… theories I guess you eggheads call 'em. First off, she didn't bother to disguise her wings, meaning that was the only stop she planned on making. However, she had a few dots of whipped cream on her face, meaning that she stopped for a milkshake before. It's… what, probable? Yeah, that's it. It's probable that she got a vanilla milkshake. That's cause I didn't see any different colored dots on her coat and vanilla is real close to whipped cream colored. Second, she obviously hadn't eaten much that day, so I think she was on a mission of some kind. A pony as rich and pampered as her wouldn't just forget to eat. Third, she was meeting with somepony that she didn't want to be seen meeting with. I saw her looking around cautiously while she trotted kinda fast."<p>

"That's… impressive."  
>"Nah, not compared to you. You know, I heard you were some kinda genius? Yeah, Twi said something about that. I didn't believe her at first, but given all this stuff…" she gestured to the blackboards, "I do now."<br>"It's not that complicated."  
>"Yeah? Best I ever did with math is solving for <em>x<em>. I don't do all these weird symbols." Rainbow flew over and pointed a hoof at one of the symbols. She turned to Charlie, waiting for an explanation as she hovered by the blackboard.

"They're letters. Greek letters, specifically. The other ones are operatives. It's all just multivariate regression and cluster analyses. As for the latter… let's say I'm taking a survey. I look at lots of variables: whether it's a pegasus, unicorn or earth pony, what their favorite color is, their coat color, their hair color, et cetera. From that I can figure out that, say, a unicorn's horn aura is either the main color in their cutie mark or their eye color. But if I want to see which ponies are similar to others, I'll want to have the ability to make them into clusters. That's what a cluster analysis does, a cluster analysis in _n _dimensions is using _n_ to describe the amount of variables." He pointed to several of the blackboards. "These are cluster analyses. Multivariate regression is a little more complicated, but that's this over here."

"Okay then. I can see why the ponies back on your world like you."  
>"They're not ponies on my world."<br>"Okay, then I can see why the things back on your world like you. Thanks Chuck."  
>"Did you get that from Don?"<br>"Who?"  
>"Forget it. It's just that everybody- everypony loves calling me that. Anyway, thanks Rainbow."<br>"No prob. Anytime I can be of use. You need any help with some more cluster thingamabobs, let me know."  
>"Don't worry, I will."<br>Rainbow was flying out the door when Charlie asked, "Hey Rainbow? Can you do a cluster analysis on… this?" He held up a sheet of paper with his magic.  
>"Sure thing!"<p>

Rainbow flew over to one of the empty blackboards. She looked back and forth from the sheet to the board as she took a piece of chalk in her teeth and began writing.  
>Charlie was astonished. She seemed to have memorized the notation. And, the processes required to perform one of these. For somebody who only got through algebra, she seemed to be a quick learner. And a natural at math.<br>Still with the chalk in her teeth she flew over to him and said, "Done!"  
>"You think you could learn how to do regression this quickly?"<br>"Nah. I don't really like math. I prefer flying. I'm more of an athlete, though your occasional nerdy thing can get through to me. Occasionally."  
>"You're this good at math and yet you don't like it?"<br>"Nope. But you were watching me fly yesterday, how was it? Was it totally awesome?"

Realizing he couldn't get through to her, reluctantly he let her leave. If he only could have taught her one thing, cluster analyses wouldn't have been it. True, they're useful, but not nearly as useful as several other concepts. He sighed and turned away from the door, beginning to work on the predictive model he'd been wanting to work on.  
>The door opened. "Charlie, you were right. Applejack was the next target. And you were right, she was in the barn when the attacker came."<br>"Were you right that you could fend them off by impersonating Twilight?"  
>"Yeah. Only bad news is that the unicorn ran off before I could ask her who she's working for and how she got that location."<p>

"I just heard from Rainbow Dash that Golden Tiara was buying weapons earlier today. A bow, arrows, a small dagger and a club."  
>"I didn't recognize this unicorn. Her cutie mark was something like this…" Amita drew a right triangle, labeling the hypotenuse 'x' and the vertical side 'y' as well as labeling the acute angle of the hypotenuse and base 'θ'.<br>"I think we've found our mathematician."


	14. Terrible Liars

"All right, darling. I've asked for an identification on that cutie mark and I've come up with this." The alabaster unicorn pulled up with her magic a sheet of paper with a photo of a unicorn with an orange coat and fuchsia mane.  
>"So this is our mathematician?"<br>"I believe so, given what you told me. Her name is Crystal Charmer, though her original name was Math. We don't have more on her original name than that. This photo was taken very recently after she was a suspect in another robbery." The picture did look surprisingly like a mug shot.  
>"Another?"<br>"She moved to the Crystal Empire when she was a filly and earned her cutie mark helping the EBI find the real culprit in a robbery she was accused of committing. She reminds me of you, dear, so I wonder why she decided to go with 'the bad guys' as you so daintily put it."

"What were these robberies of? Banks? Do you even have those here?"  
>"Yes, we do, darling. However, they weren't bank robberies. They were robberies of universities. Stolen items included not-yet-hatched griffon and dragon eggs."<br>"Who would steal eggs? Mythical creature eggs or otherwise?"  
>"There is an extremist group that believes dragons and griffons are equal to ponies since they are intelligent and sentient life forms as well. What this group does not know, apparently, is that these eggs would not have been able to hatch on their own, given that the mothers were unable to care for them. Ponies with majors in biology have made it their project to hatch these eggs such that it has become a staple over time, even going as far as being the entrance exam for Princess Celestia's school for gifted unicorns!"<p>

"If there's one thing I've learned from what we've done back home, it's to never underestimate the mind's ability to rationalize the irrational. And that's one of the reasons why I prefer math: it's impossible to rationalize the irrational."  
>"I might just become a mathematician thanks to you."<br>"That would be great. But back on topic, is Crystal Charmer a part of this group?"  
>"No, and according to this, she helped the EBI catch some of its members!"<br>"Then I'm wondering the same things you are. Why would Crystal sign on to help these ponies if she's helped the EBI in the past?"  
>"She was arrested…"<br>"And when somebody feels wronged, they'll act illogically… I need to go. Thanks, Rarity!"  
>"Um… not an issue…?" The unicorn shrugged as she watched Charlie run off to his cave of chalkboards.<p>

Charlie corralled all of the five as well as Amita and Don in the throne room. There he explained about Crystal Charmer's case and while he was at it, a good bit about game theory. Everypony but Rainbow and Applejack got it.  
>"What don't you understand?" he turned to face the two.<br>"Ah just don't get that y'all can just tell me what somepony's feeling with a bunch 'a equations. Just feels wrong to me."  
>"I don't get anything. At all. I mean, I understand the part about how she's on the side of the bad guys and we don't know why, but all that history stuff is boring. Oh, and I understood the math bit too."<br>"It's okay if you don't know the history, Rainbow. That's just what gets us to the point, and you get that. I'll explain game theory to Applejack if…"  
>"Can I do this one? PLEASE?"<br>"Okay."

"All-righty, AJ. So it works like this." Rainbow got ten bits and placed them in Applejack's hooves. "Give me however many you want and you can keep the rest."  
>Applejack gave Rainbow two bits.<br>"Seriously AJ?"  
>"Ah need the money, okay? Make yur point."<br>"Alright. Now, I can refuse this if I want to, and neither of us gets anything. Now I'm going to do that, 'cause if I only get two bits I want to get revenge on you, even though it hurts me in the process. That's what Charlie's talking about with this game theory stuff. Kay?"

Rainbow put all ten bits away and Applejack said, "Okay, Ah can see somepony doing that."  
>"Everybody understands what I mean now?"<br>"Yeah."  
>"Thanks Rainbow, that was helpful."<br>"No prob, Charlie. As I said, anything I can do to help."  
>"Hey, you didn't call me 'Chuck' or 'egghead' that time!"<br>"Uh… well I meant… um…"  
>Pinkie giggled. "Hey Dashie, you're blushing!"<br>"I-I am not!"  
>"Are you all such terrible liars?"<br>"Rarity isn't!" The pink pony giggled again.  
>"What?! How uncouth! I am a terrible liar! Who said I was a good liar, Pinkie? Who? I… I am going to sue somepony for this! I don't know when… and I don't know how… BUT BY CELESTIA I AM GOING TO SUE SOMEPONY!"<p>

"I'll have you all know, I am engaged!" He turned his nose up like somepony from Canterlot.  
>Amita smiled and added, "Yeah, to me!"<br>"Lucky…" muttered Rainbow. Luckily for _her_, Pinkie was too busy going gaga over the happy couple to even notice her.

Twilight sighed. "Charlie… I suppose… you are finished… here?"  
>"Oh. Yeah. And we'll get right to work on tracking down Crystal Charmer."<br>Rainbow flew out quickly before Pinkie could make fun of her any more, a lingering bit of crimson on her cheeks as she headed toward the library. All the rest walked (though Pinkie bounced after the rest) back to their rooms, even including Applejack. Everypony supposed she'd come too close for comfort in the near-dying category.

By the time it was time to set the sun and raise the moon, Don had come back from his field day with the EBI and Charlie and Amita had come up with a few hot zones for where Crystal Charmer might be. After the sun was set they heavily expected the clip-clop of hooves down the hallway as Rainbow made her way to her bedroom, or at least the gentle beating of wings. Silence.

Around 10:00 p.m., Charlie got out of bed and walked down the hallway to the library to remind Rainbow to get some sleep. He thought he saw a cloaked pony figure run silently into the dark library, but then again the place was dark and the only illumination was created by his horn. He turned the corner, looking into the library as he announced,  
>"Rainbow, you should really get some…"<br>The unspoken words died before they made it out. He was so shocked that even his magical light flickered like a candle in danger of being snuffed out by a strong breeze. Rainbow was laying near-unconscious, both wings forcibly broken near the joint and badly bleeding all over the crystal floors. Her face was stained with blood, sweat and tears; she'd obviously been hurt very recently. A meek "help…" escaped her lips.

Charlie rushed over and screamed down the hall something, even he didn't know what exactly it was but it amounted to 'Rainbow Dash is hurt badly, somebody help her!'  
>"Keep breathing, Rainbow," he told her.<br>"Y-Yeah… I- I k-know that…" A shiver ran down the mare's body, followed by an unspoken scream that Rainbow wouldn't allow herself to utter.  
>"It'll be okay, hold on. They're coming."<br>"Who's… t-they?" Then she went cold and started shaking, an utterly terrified look in her eyes as her pupils dilated a huge amount all of a sudden. "Wha- What's happening…?"

Suddenly the realization struck him that, save for (maybe!) Discord, he was the most powerful pony in Equestria. He had to know how to do this.  
>"Hold on, Rainbow. Hold on."<br>He closed his eyes tightly shut, if his memory was a file cabinet he'd have tossed it across the room by now trying to find something. But then again, he'd recently been borrowing several others' cabinets. Namely, Celestia's and Twilight's. THEY had to know something… anything.

Rapidly he found a spell he thought would work. He wasn't certain but it was of a high probability and that's the best you can get. As fast as he could he cast the spell, though he didn't even hear the sound of two ponies running down the hallway and turning the corner into the library and the resulting shock of those two ponies as they saw that he was hovering a few inches above the ground without beating his wings combined with the shock that came with Rainbow's current… state.

Amita and Don didn't stand there and be spectators for very long. A few seconds after they ran through the door, Amita rushed over and pushed all her magic into the spell as well. And, fully aware of what he was doing (that being magic), Don did the same. Rainbow was swept up in their collective aura, some of which wrapped around her wings like shimmering bandages and seeped through her skin. The pegasus mare's body hung limply in the air as their collective aura pulsed magical energy into her. Growing more tired by the second each of the other two thought to Charlie some version of "We can't go any further, she's gone."  
>"I didn't hear that." Charlie thought back defiantly, shoving even more magic into Rainbow.<p>

There was a loud gasp. All three opened their eyes to see Rainbow open hers, looking somewhere between surprised and terrified. Her fear-stricken eyes met Charlie's and stayed fixed there for a good while. Slowly but surely less and less magic was required to keep the pegasus alive. Her wings began beating out of habit like they should, not one faster than the other, rhythmically unwavering. She landed and soon afterward the three had stopped magically floating. Don and Amita each ended up just sitting down where they were to recover from the dizziness. Charlie nearly fell over running to ask Rainbow if she was alright.

"Heh… yeah… I'm- I'm okay. T-Thanks to you… that is…"  
>"Not a problem. You're sure you're alright?"<br>"I was… dead."  
>"I know! That's why I'm…"<br>"But I'm better now." There was a look in Rainbow's eyes that he just couldn't place. She looked nervous, but also vaguely excited… Then she leaned over and gently kissed him on the cheek.

Amita was horrified and she sat there in shock.  
>"I've… kinda wanted to do that for a while now…" She was still blushing slightly as she turned to speak to Amita. "Listen. I know you two are engaged, I know how much of a shock that had to have been but I had no way of saying this if I hadn't. It also… kinda helped me out. So hear me out here, okay?"<br>Dumbfounded, Amita simply nodded.  
>"Kay. When I first saw you two together I was really jealous. I thought he only liked you 'cause you met 'im first. Now I see that I was caught up in my jealousy and didn't think, and if there's one thing you have to do with him, that's thinking." Rainbow nodded to herself, reconciling her words. "And to both of you: never, ever stop loving each other. Cause if you do, I'll come to your world, wherever that is, and I'll kick your flanks."<p>

Amita smiled and walked over. "That took a lot of courage. Though I don't… agree with your means… your point was well-intentioned. Thank you. And don't worry, we won't." She walked over to her fiancé. "Right?"  
>"Oh. …Right."<br>"Is that a blush I see?"  
>"…Of course not!"<br>As Rainbow flew out of the library toward her room she turned for a few seconds to say, "Are you all such terrible liars?"


	15. and that I really hate chariots

"We can't have anypony else… coming in to this castle." Twilight didn't have the strength to pace, what she'd normally do if talking like this. In actuality she barely had the strength to sit upright. "The castle's lockdown system… is directly attached… to my magic."  
>"You're saying Charlie has to do it? AWW, Charlie gets to do everything fun!" Pinkie whined.<br>"I wouldn't call this… fun… Pinkie… But I wouldn't call it hard either."  
>"Unlike most of the tasks you've given him, darling."<br>"And I… apologize for that. But this spell is not hard… in fact it is quite a simple… …incantation."  
>Charlie nodded.<br>"It is as such…: 'Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye'. Nopony breaks a… Pinkie Promise… and nopony breaks… my lock system… either." Twilight paused. Right as he began, she stopped him. "You must do the motions… as well."

When he looked moderately confused, Pinkie Pie exclaimed, "Like this!" and demonstrated. He noted that this could be some this-group-of-friends-specific play off of the original version of this, though it did seem more fitting to this culture. Doing the motions along with it this time, he said, "Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye."  
>With that there was an impressively loud magical sound echoed through the castle, causing everypony to put their hooves over their ears. Then there was silence. He looked out a window – there was a huge bubble of magenta-colored aura surrounding the castle, shimmering in the bright noontime sunlight.<br>"Sweet!" exclaimed Rainbow, looking out the window with him. She turned. "Hey Twi! When did you make this thing? It's really cool!"  
>"It was a simple spell but… it needed doing. I cast it after talking to… Fluttershy… after she fell off… the balcony of… the Town Hall."<p>

"So nopony can get through this thing?"  
>"No… Rainbow… they can't. Not without my permission. Or… rather… the pony who holds my magic's permission."<br>"It can't be completely impenetrable…" Charlie walked back away from the window. "Can it?"  
>"Nope!" Pinkie bounced over. "See, magical theory suggests that any force field of any power can be broken through with a sufficiently advanced physical force, like that changeling army from the end of season 2, but it can't be broken by magical force. Even so, each shield has a different magical strength, heavily dependent on the pony casting it, so this one would be ultra, ultra strong 'cause you cast it and you have, like, two alicorns worth of magic! Right Twilight?"<br>"…Y-Yes… Pinkie…" Twilight was slightly astonished. "How… did you know all that, Pinkie?"  
>"I have no idea!" Pinkie bounced away from where Rainbow and Charlie were hovering and standing, respectively.<p>

"That's Pinkie Pie for ya." Rainbow shrugged.  
>"I noticed." He walked over to Twilight. "Amita and I have pinpointed where Crystal would have the highest probability of residing."<br>She nodded, the question "And where is that?" implicit.  
>"Somewhere on the same plateau as the Academy. This is confirming my theory that Lightning Dust is the ringleader here."<br>"Not… a theory… she was here… she is. I'm sorry… I didn't tell you earlier. Regardless… go ahead."  
>"Hey Twi, wait a sec. You're saying Charlie should just fly over and chat with the enemy?"<br>"Relax, Rainbow. Lightning may not be so keen on you, but she seems to be fine with me. I… still don't know why."

Pinkie nudged him. "Ooh, somepony has a crush on you!"  
>"Ugh. I doubt that. Quite heavily. For one thing, Lightning doesn't like colts." Rainbow responded for him.<br>"Oh. Okie Dokie Loki, Dashie!" The pink pony shrugged. "WAIT. How do you know that?"  
>"She told me. We were partners, remember?"<br>"Oh yeah!"  
>"Yeah…"<p>

Rarity cleared her throat. "Darling, I believe there are more important topics to discuss than whether Lightning Dust likes colts."  
>"Yeah, Rarity?" Rainbow turned to face the unicorn, continuing to hover.<br>"I could use a modified version of my gem-finding spell to locate Crystal's 'secret lair' as Rainbow so eloquently put it, once we are in close range."  
>"Hey, I was just trying to make it sound cooler."<br>"…Anyway, that would be great, Rarity."  
>"Actually, darling, I have a better idea. It would be, to say the least, difficult, but I could… yes. Alright, somepony get me a chariot. A nice one."<p>

Rarity magically hooked herself into the chariot.  
>"Eh, Rarity? Ah dunno, but ya ain't exactly the fastest runner around… how're ya gonna pull two ponies?"<br>In response she simply tapped her horn.  
>"If ya're gonna teleport, why'd ya need the chariot?"<br>Rarity sighed. "Applejack, remember when I told you my cutie mark story? How my horn took me to the giant geode? That was an accidental manifestation of my talent. I can adapt the same spell, however difficult, to lead us to Crystal."  
>"Oh, okay. Ah get it… ya know, ya could've said that in the first place."<br>"I was trying to… oh forget it. Celestia knows that you cannot pick up on social cues."  
>"It ain't 'cannot', it's 'choose not to'."<br>"Anyways, I'm finished. Charlie, climb in please."

After a few moments of silence as Rarity was recalling how to perform the spell, her horn began to glow a bluish color, followed by rays of light shooting from it in various directions. And then, without even moving her hooves, she began to move forward. Her expression relaxed and she moved her hooves in a motion to make it look like she was trotting.  
>"Later, dears!" Rarity exclaimed just as she began to speed up to what would have, if she were actually running, been a brisk gallop.<br>Charlie looked at the open back of the chariot as he held on tightly to the front and wondered how these things would ever pass a safety inspection. They also are supposed to and designed to fly. That bit of trivia made him question the inventor of this thing's sanity.

"Rarity, do you know who invented these chariots?"  
>"Uhm… No dear, I don't. Why do you ask?"<br>"The back is open. Couldn't somebody just fly out the back?"  
>"No, the chariot is magically protected. That's simply where the non-magical part ends, it's purely aesthetic. Speaking of which, darling, you can let go of the side."<br>"Oh." He let go of the side. Nothing happened. "Oh! This is… a lot of fun, actually! How fast are we going?"  
>"Quite quickly, but not quickly enough to mess up my coiffure. I would prefer not to have hair that looks like Rainbow Dash's when this operation is finished. No offense to Rainbow."<p>

They rode for a while in silence, being pulled towards their destination at remarkable speed purely by the power of Rarity's horn. As the Academy came into view, Rarity said,  
>"This thing looks much… higher… when you come at it from the ground…"<br>"Not that you can't get up it." He leaned slightly over the rail to look at her. "Right?"  
>"No, I can, it's just impressive." She looked over to see the residual worry on his face. "Apologies for, as Applejack put it, 'nearly giving you heart failure'."<p> 


	16. You Want a Donut?

There was a rather convenient but fairly long and steep ramp going up and around the entire plateau, apparently it had been carved into its rather rocky stone sides. Though neither expected to end up at the Academy, it was soon that they realized that they weren't at the Academy, exactly. Near the top of the plateau, only about fifty feet down from it actually, there was a strong magical signature coming from a section of rock. Rarity's horn stopped glowing and the chariot came to a stop.

"Where are we?" Charlie tapped the rock with a hoof, it gave off a similar 'zap' feeling to being on the receiving end of static electricity.  
>"The spell seems to think we've arrived, as such we must be at the entrance. It might be a stretch, but let me try something." With that, Rarity powered up a spell similar in magical signature to the first. An outline of an arched doorway formed and the door creaked open as if the huge mass of rock was on hinges.<br>"That was great. Thanks, Rarity." And with that, he cautiously trotted in. There was a long, dark tunnel with a light at the end. He walked in darkness and in almost pure silence, save for his and Rarity's hoofsteps, toward the light. Slowly the floor beneath their hooves became not dirt but tile, first slightly beat-up then progressively more polished. Their hoofsteps got a little louder as they trotted over the tiles.

They heard a voice, it was almost definitely female and sounded fairly young. She seemed to be mumbling to herself, they got close enough so they could see a room being lit by several fluorescent light bulbs and the mumbling stopped. They heard what sounded vaguely like the unsheathing of a sword of some kind before a pony jumped out in front of them, blocking their path. The pony's coat was orange and her hair was fuchsia, her eyes a dark magenta. Though the pony would normally have looked completely harmless, she was pointing a samurai-sword-like weapon at them. The fact that she was shooting daggers out of her eyes made it a slight bit more intimidating.

"Who are you and how did you find me?!" she demanded.  
>"Careful with that sword, darling, you might hurt somepony." Rarity gently tugged the sword out of the pony's magical grasp and tossed it aside, it made a clattering noise against the tile. "Now. I suppose you are Crystal Charmer?"<br>"How do you know my name? Who are you?" her voice sounded more worried than threatening now, it actually sounded like she was angry and sad at the same time.  
>"My name is Rarity, this is Charlie, and we don't mean to hurt you." Rarity walked over and patted the filly's head. In response Crystal swatted at her hoof as if it was a large bug trying to sting her.<br>"I don't want you to put me down just cause I'm young! Foals have rights too!" Crystal half-screamed.

"True, but last I checked there was no law saying I couldn't pat somepony on the head to be friendly."  
>"You're not being friendly, you're being condescending!"<br>"My my, what big words for a filly!"  
>"See?! You're telling me I'm not allowed to be sesquipedalian purely because of my lack of experience and my youth!"<br>It was then that Charlie spoke up. "I know what that's like – people talking down to you just because you're young. But lashing out at them isn't going to help, it's just going to make them mad, or worse, they're going to think that's just you being a kid and you being childish."

"Congress ponies get up and shout at each other all day long and nopony calls them childish," Crystal pointed out, though she sounded much more like she was just stating a fact than like she was being immature and hostile.  
>"You're right, they don't," Charlie laughed, "But between you and me, I think somebody should."<br>"Agreed," Crystal nodded, "If you can get your 'friend' over there to stop treating me like that, I'll show you guys around."  
>"I'm not sure what I was doing to upset you, darling, but you have my word that I shan't pat you on the head or in any way lead you to believe that I care about you."<br>"Thanks. Alrighty, well, you might've guessed from my cutie mark that I'm a mathematician. You'd be right. I'm also a writer and an artist, though. I really love doing math, but I don't really classify algebra as 'math'. I classify algebra as 'annoying'."

"_It can be tedious at a few points, but I'd hardly call it 'annoying'._"  
>"Yeah, I did guess that you were a mathematician."<br>"Most ponies can guess that much."  
>"If you don't mind me asking, how old are you?"<br>"Oh. I'm 12. And I don't mind you asking, no. By the way…" Crystal levitated over a donut from one of the boxes on the island in the center of the room and offered it, "Want one?"  
>"No thanks."<br>"Mm." She took a bite as she shrugged. Her next sentence was muffled a bit by the donut in her mouth, "Your loss."

"I do so enjoy the style in which you've decorated your room, darling." Rarity looked around the room. There was a whiteboard entirely covering one wall with a bucket full of colorful dry erase markers on one edge. There was a mini-fridge in the corner stocked full of diet sodas; a stack of ordinary, Earth-style printer paper on top of it. There were several sheets of blank paper tacked up to the far wall. There was a twin-size bed with pink covers. The island's marble countertop was almost entirely covered with snacks – an open box of frosted corn flakes; a stack of boxes of chocolate frosted mini donuts, the recently opened box that she'd just taken the donut from next to the stack; a previously opened, partially finished half-gallon of chocolate milk; an empty bowl, a used spoon in it; and a box full of seemingly fresh French fries as if someone had come with new ones only a few hours ago. That worried Charlie just a little.

"Thanks," Crystal replied.  
>"You're welcome, darling. If I may ask, though… what are these for?" Rarity gestured to several notes scribbled on the whiteboard within boxes of various colors.<br>"Oh. Stuff for my writing. See? I have 'Shana becomes a human in the next chapter and tries to cope though her coltfriend is still in Equestria'… Shana is one of my characters who gave herself a human name cause she'd rather be a human. But, see, she's torn between her dream of becoming human and her coltfriend, who refuses to leave his old man in Equestria."  
>"I think that'd be a great story."<br>"I haven't worked on it for a while… cause what's the point of writing fiction when your life is an adventure, right? That and I kinda have a bunch of work to do…" Crystal gestured to a note that said in all capitals, "GET THE BLUEPRINTS DONE TOMORROW, OR ELSE!"

"Blueprints for what?"  
>Crystal sighed. "You shouldn't know this… but if you swear not to tell anypony…"<br>Charlie did the motions for a Pinkie Promise, non-verbally swearing that he wouldn't speak a word of whatever Crystal told him next.  
>"Alright." She pulled out the tacks supporting one of the blank sheets of paper and flipped the paper over, revealing a rough blueprint of a modified rifle. The trigger was made much larger to allow for somepony to pull it with a hoof since ponies have no fingers. Otherwise the mechanisms were roughly the same, though several specific places were made larger to allow for usage with hooves.<p>

"You're designing guns?!"  
>"Magic fields can be broken with sufficient physical force. Guns are specifically designed to use significant amounts of physical force. Though it took the Queen's entire changeling army weeks to beat through the shield, it would take a pony with a gun a maximum of an hour. We could rule Equestria while barely requiring any magic!"<br>"Whose idea was this?"  
>"…Can't tell you that."<br>"When did they hire you? And why?"  
>"Can't tell you that either. I can tell you that, in a week, Equestria will be ours."<p>

"I've read enough stories to know that after the antagonist says something like that, they try to kill the protagonists."  
>"I'm not an antagonist, first of all. I'm the protagonist. I'm the spy for the inside that didn't even used to know she was a spy. You ponies aren't the protagonists. You're not on my side. I'm on my own side. That's why I'm not gonna kill you. At least right now. You were and still are free to go. Unless, of course…"<br>"_She's gonna offer for us to join her._"  
>"…You want a donut."<p> 


End file.
